
Class J-Eiia 
Book .EJI 



GopyiightN". 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT: 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/masteryofmindinmOOfran 




Henry Frank 



The Mastery of Mind 

in the 

Making of a Man 



By Henry Frank 

Author of * * The Doom of Dogma and the Daivn 
of Truth,'' ''A Vision of the Invisible,'' ''The 
Shrine of Silence, " " The Kingdom of Love, ' ' etc. 



R. F. FENNO & COMPANY 

18 EAST SEVENTEENTH ST., NEW YORK 



^\^\ 

^^^ 



U^SARY of CONGRESS 
Two eoDies Heceive^- 

AUG 28 ]y08 

G«-^SS CL AXC. «... 

Copyright, 1908, by 
HENRY FRANK 




The Mastery of Mind' 



LC Control Number 




tinp96 025775 



CONTENTS. 



PART I. 

THE PSYCHIC FACTORS. 

CHAPTER I. 

THE MIND. 

PAGE 

Limitations of traditional psycliology. — Sir William Hamil- 
ton's definition of mind. — Relation of mind and brain. — 
Descartes' conception of mind. — The mind as architect 
of the body. — Can the mind think without a physical 
instrument ?— Explanation of Swedenborg's clairvoyant 
vision. — The mind compared with the sun. — Subtle psy- 
chic forces in lives of Louis XV. , Peter the Great, George , 
Eliot, etc. — The law of mental response or reciprocity 
of environment 1 

CHAPTER II. 

THE MIND {Continued). 

Scientific analysis of the substantiality of thought. — Strange 
experience of an author. — How mental images are made. 
— A psychic voice. — Resurrection of buried memories. — 
Experience of Gen. Joe Wheeler. — The law of cell-segre- 
gation and thought forms. — Professor Carpenter's story 
illustrating mechanical action of subconscious mind. — 
Where brain activities are recorded. — Parallel growth of 
mind and braiu. — Vicarious functioning of mental facul- 
ties. — The power and development of personality 15 



Contents. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE HEART. 

PAGE 

Secret springs of desire. — Experience of Horace Fletcher in 
conquering anger and worry. — How Pestalozzi became 
a great teacher. — Dangers of despondency. — Count Tol- 
stoy's melancholia. — Classification of ethical elements 
in natural impulses. — How moral character is made. — 
Growth of emotions illustrated by Othello's jealousy. — 
Law of cumulative energy 31 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE SOUL. 

Different interpretations of the soul. — Plato. — Leibnitz. — 
Mahomet's apology. — Aristotle. — Sir J. Da vies's metrical 
definition of soul. — Forces which compose the soul. — 
Soul-force measured in foot-pounds. — How mind-force 
is differentiated from matter-force. — Classification of the 
soul-forces. — Ethico-psychical forces. — Finality of expe- 
rience 49 



PART II. 

THE PHYSICAL INSTRUMENTS. 

CHAPTER Y. 

THE BRAIN. 

Concomitant evolution of intelligence and brain structure. — 
Intelligence and brain weight and size. — Building of the 
brain by mental action. — Hallucinations caused by in- 
terrupted circulation. — Oflfice of the three brains. — How 
the brain photographs the mind 67 



Contents. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE NERVES. 

PAGE 

Mechanism of the nerves. — Relation of the nerves to the 
brain. — How nerve-substance responds to thought-force. 
Susceptibility of nerve-substance to electricity and at- 
mospheric conditions. — Prof. Loeb's experiments. — Men- 
tal energy an electrical discharge. — Rational treatment 
of hysterical and insane. — Physical benefit derived from 
reverie and meditation. — Education of the nerves and 
ethical culture. — How mental qualities are developed. . . 88 



CHAPTER VH. 

THE BODY. 

Dependence of destiny on bodily conditions. — Edgar Allan 
Poe. — Oscar Wild^. — Byron. — Elizabeth B. Browning. 
— Boswell's description of physical appearance of Dr. 
SamuelJohnson. — Longevity of man and animals. — Reg- 
ularity in habits. — Law of division of labor in moral de- 
velopment. — Exercise and relaxation. — Rest and sleep. 
Amount of energy a man daily expends. — Kathaniel 
Hawthorne on supreme necessity of rest for the race. — 
Why sleep rests us. — M de Manaceine. — Comparatively 
slight sleep required by some great men. — Methods of 
combating insomnia. — Southey's prescription for induc- 
ing sleep. — Rhythmic breathing and nerve-response. — 
Correct method of respiration. — Education and nerve or- 
ganization. — Cause of vicarious activities between bodily 
organs.— Vicarious substitution of work between olfac- 
tory and optic nerves. — Why geniuses are often dull in 
youth. 107 



Contents. 



PAUT III. 

THE MORAL AGENTS. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

THE PARENTS. 

PAGE 

Ancient source of every human being, — Germ-plasm and 
hereditary life. — Immortality of germ-plasm or life-sub- 
stance. — Weissman on evolution of the germ cell. — 
Analysis of the germ -cell. — Physical seat of hereditary 
forces. — Working of the law of heredity. — Darwin on 
heredity, — Complexity and interference of hereditary 
forces, — Origin of sex in evolution of cell, — Pre-natal 
influence on offspring. — Brace on descent of abnormal 
hereditary qualities. — Office of legislation in restricting 
marriage rite. — Heredity and astrological influences, — 
Charles Kingsley on pre-natal influences. — Theory of 
reincarnation in birth. — Responsibility in procreation 
of human souls. — Of children moulded before birth after 
an ideal pattern, — Three qualifications essential to good 
parentage, — Effect of alcohohc habit on offspring, — 
Neglect and culpability of prospective mothers 145 

CHAPTER IX. 

THE TEACHER. 

Most responsible ofBce in life. — Popular inappreciation, — 
True object in education, — Psychic growth in infancy. 
Caspar Hausar, — Pestalozzi on true education. — Herbert 
Spencer on Education. — Experience of the youthful 
Tyudal. — Education during adolescence, — Dr. G. Stan- 
ley Hall. — Adolescent education should be in school 
curriculum, — The crime of corporal punishment. — Lom- 
broso on percentage of abnormal children, — How a 
recalcitrant youth was conquered 177 



Contents. 



CHAPTER X. 

ENVIRONMENT. 

PAGE 

Man the product of environment. — Nature of environment. 
— Prof. Drummond on absorption from physical environ- 
ment. What causes so many different kinds of people. 
Psychic origin of diseases. — Practice of mental thera- 
peutics. — Mind and the disease germ. Influence of en- 
vironment on temperaments. The four temperaments 
described. — Characteristics of the sanguine temperament. 
— Characteristics of the choleric temperament. — Charac- 
teristics of the nervous temperament. — Characteristics 
of the phlegmatic temperament. — Happy matings based 
on temperamental qualities. — The controlling force in 
mental mastery. — Telepathy: Its laws, limitations and 
possibilities. — Law of Scientific Optimism 201 



PART I. 

€f)e 5^^pcl)ic factor^* 

I. The Mind. 
II. The Heart. 
III. The Soul. 



THE MASTERY OF MIND. 



CHAPTER I. 

kx^ggvj OME day Psychology will become a practi- 
IJ^^^^I cal science reduced to the daily needs 
Ij^^g^l of man and included in the regular 
curricula of schools and colleges. The 
Psychology that at present is studied is an academic 
pursuit, prosecuted chiefly to add to the curiosities of 
knowledge and the^gratification of intellectual thirst. 
We are taught to regard the mind as an abstract 
faculty of the soul, or as an aggregation of faculties, 
each of which is controlled by metaphysical causes, 
beyond the apprehension of the ordinary man. The 
mind, they say, is the seer, the feeler, the thinker. 
The mind is the aggregation of the phenomena of 
consciousness. The mind is the stage on which all 
the inward forces play their several parts ; w^here the 
great drama of being is set and the ever-changing 
scenes are shifted. Yet how it works, by what law 

[1] 



The Mastery of Mind. 



it is controlled, what deep-laid energies may be con- 
jured for daily use, how it may be made a tool and 
not a mysterious agency at which we marvel but 
w^hich we cannot apprehend, this the Psychology of 
the universities does not yet teach us. 

We are still too much within the grip of ancient 
and traditional philosophy; we are still studying 
man as a marvellously and wonderfully made being, 
entranced by its mysterious formation, but paralyzed 
into ignorance by its overawing complexity. Thus 
we read in Sir William Hamilton's " Metaphysics " : 
^^ Mind is to be understood as the subject of the vari- 
ous internal phenomena of which we are conscious, 
or that subject of which consciousness is the general 
phenomenon. Consciousness is in fact to the mind 
what extension is to body and matter. Though both 
are phenomena, yet bo^h are essential qualities; for 
we can neither conceive mind without consciousness 
nor can we conceive body without extension '^ (Chap- 
ter viii). 

From this definition we are forced to conclude 
that there is a vast background of existence, an 
abysm of being, which does not fall within the realm 
of mind, because it is beyond the plane of conscious- 
ness. We are continually aware of things happen- 
ing, the source of which seems beyond our grasp. 
We are, so far as our conscious mind is concerned, 



The Mind. 



but an open door through which mysterious visitors 
and messengers approach us by the corridors of the 
feelings, perceptions, thoughts, etc., like ghostly 
presences that come and go, which we can neither 
conjure nor despatch. What is this deeper realm of 
which each individual is instinctively conscious, yet 
which he cannot instantly apprehend. Is it no part 
of mind, because it rises not into the objective plane 
of conscious activity ? Is it some strange, sublunary 
sphere which surrounds our conscious orb of being, 
and floats like a fata Morgana on the shores of self, 
ever but to amaze and confound us? Can we be 
satisfied with a Mental Science or a Psychology 
which omits the interpretation of so vast a section of 
one's organity, and presumes to study only what is 
apparent on the surface of the self, yet leaves to 
vague conjecture the deeper source of all? And if, 
perchance, we shall be permitted to catch a glimpse 
of this deeper realm, shall we discern it but to our 
confusion, or will we there learn of laws whose ap- 
prehension may be turned to our daily benefit and 
practical application? 

Unless we shall find some secret underlying the 
laws of life which we can utilize in our daily activi- 
ties there is but little value in a knowledge, in itself 
so gratifying to curiosity and pleasing to one's con- 
ceit. 

[3] 



The Mastery of Mind. 



MIND ANALYZED AND DEFINED. 

The problem we must meet and conquer, if we can, 
is how Mind and all its wonder-workings can effect- 
ually operate in the realm of the body and yet leave 
mind and body virtually independent. If the mind 
is simply the plane of conscious action, then has it 
no counterpart in the action of the body, registered 
betimes in the very substance of the brain, inditing 
its history in its cells and fibres? The old philoso- 
phers used to teach us that the mind is a thing apart, 
an insubstantial presence incorporated in the physi- 
cal body, yet so superior to it that by its very nature 
it could not coalesce. Thus Descartes says : " The 
idea I have of the human mind, in so far as it is a 
thinking thing, and not extended in length, breadth 
and depth, and participating in none of the proper- 
ties of the body, is incomparahli/ more distinct than 
the idea of any corporeal body " (Meditations). Yet 
such an interpretation troubles us. For if it is a 
thing so far apart from the body that it participates 
in none of its properties, is not to be measured or 
construed by the working forces of the animal organ- 
ism, then how are we to apprehend it at all, and of 
what value to us is such a definition ? 

If the mind, as thus defined, becomes but the prod- 
uct of the imagination, without body and without 

[4] 



The Mind. 



parts, it is utterly valueless for practical application 
to life's necessities, and might as well be relegated to 
the limbo of inexplicable mysteries. Were it not 
that modern psychology could release itself from the 
limitations of this ancient construction it would 
cease to be worth the time necessary to spend in its 
pursuit. But we have found that indeed the mind, 
as incorporated in a human organism, is not only 
not absolutely separable from its corporeal enclos- 
ure, but that its existence is wholly dependent upon 
it, and without it its activities would be utterly un- 
known. We find that the vast abysm of the self 
from which our conscious life emanates is after all 
not a mysterious realm, void of physical relation- 
ship, but that it too is inwoven in the physical tis- 
sues of the corporeal frame. Were it not so; were 
we to reach the inescapable conclusion that all the 
insubstantial forces, which play upon our being and 
so often cause the action of our conscious minds and 
our physical bodies, were beyond the apprehension 
of scientific study, then it would be useless to seek 
practical value in the pursuit. But because we now 
learn that what seems to rise within our beings, like 
a wandering phantom penetrating the sanctity of 
our self-seclusion, is not a visitor from some sublu- 
nary sphere, but a momentary response to latent 
forces in our physical forms, we perhaps have found 

[5] 



The Mastery of Mind. 



the secret of a science that is both philosophical and 
practical.* 

The Mind, as we shall learn, is indeed the master- 
builder of the man. Yet were it an irresponsible 
architect, working without our knowledge or the 
limitation of our control, we would indeed be but 
wafting waifs on the ocean of eternity. If the mind 
be the absolute architect, then the man is the unwit- 
ting product. But if, after all, the man though 
made by the mind is its superior and having learned 
its laws can control its energies, then there is hope 
that he may so guide it as to build to some desired 
destiny. 

* ' ' The law of concomitance demands that there shall always 
be structural modification of the nerve cell when there is mental 
phenomenon ; there is chemical reaction, production of heat and 
electricity, expenditure of force and fatigue, all physical phe- 
nomena, which, if one considers the reaction in itself, would 
seem to interdict all differentiation between the mind and the 
body, 

"But the distinction is born again and clearly established 
when one analyzes the stimuli which have determined the reac- 
tion, and when one examines whence they come and whither 
they tend. To be sad is a mental state ; it is, thei'efore, a psy- 
chic manifestation, but we recognize in it a physical substratum, 
since every act of consciousness must have a corresponding cer- 
ebral state. In its essence the phenomenon is psychological, as is 
everything that takes place in our mentality. But the expres- 
sion of it is psychic, [physical ?] it is translated by discouraged 
words and by abnormal volitions." — Dubois's *' The Psychic 
Treatment of Nervous Diseases," p. 86. 

[6] 



The Mind. 



The popular mind, still bound by ancient tradi- 
tion, is easily shocked by novel conceptions. It 
starts and retreats at terms that suggest surrender 
to an enemy. For so many ages the two opposite 
camps of the materialist and the spiritualist have 
been mustered against each other in frequent con- 
flict, that either denounces a conclusion which seems 
to forestall victory for the other. Hence, if a defini- 
tion of mind is rendered which seems to be material- 
istic, it affrights the spiritualist; and, if the con- 
trary, it appals and disgusts the materialist. But 
Truth is " no respecter of persons " or parties. The 
mind, whatever else it may be, is a force operating 
within the body, and through the body into outer 
space. It is a force whose activities are registered 
in the physical framework, and which can be de- 
tected only by physical instrumentalities. We may 
discover, for instance, that a mind-activity projects 
beyond the body in which it is engendered, but its 
apprehension by another mind is likewise only 
through the body in which that second mind oper- 
ates. Unless, indeed, the second mind is associated 
with a brain which is susceptible to the registration 
of the vibrations that emanate from the first mind 
through its brain, intercommunication is impossible. 
If, for instance, I speak, the speech is the reflex of 
will-energy which I inwardly experience. Such 

[7] 



The Mastery of Mind. 



speech will affect another human being only if it be 
so constructed that its organs are receptive to the 
vibrations which emanate from my lips, which vibra- 
tions are themselves the reflex of a mental effort. 
If the other person be deaf, then the speech is in- 
effective, because it cannot vibrate on the instrument 
of the ear that will awaken similar vibrations in the 
brain of the receiver. So with all the organs. But 
one says, this may be true when we regard physical 
acts which respond to mental efforts; but what of 
pure mental effort void for the time being of appar- 
ent material association ? The supposition is that a 
mind, by pure thinking, is void of physical relation- 
ship. This is erroneous; there is no thought with- 
out a brain vibration; no impulse without a nerve 
discharge or response. Hence, the very act of think- 
ing itself is a physical effort ; and if the vibrations 
which emanate from it into the ethereal atmosphere 
shall impinge some brain responsive to it, the second 
brain will by reflex result catch the wandering 
thought of the original thinker. 

Thus when Swedenborg sitting in a room many 
miles from Copenhagen saw distinctly the glare of 
flames that were consuming a portion of the city, his 
mental vision could be explained by the law above 
stated. The thrilled and anxious minds of the Copen- 
hagen friends who were being endangered might so 

[8] 



The Mind. 



have cast their vibrations hence into the ether as to 
have impinged his brain, at that moment naturally 
in a susceptible mood. 

The mind may be compared with the sun, with its 
disk, corona, and photosphere. The common eye 
discerns naught but the golden disk of the orb of 
day as it rides through the heavens and sinks in the 
west. But to the keener eye of the telescope it re- 
veals the flaring crown of incandescent splendor that 
flames its brow, encircling it with a sea of licking 
tongues of fire. And to a still keener vision, the 
luminous photosphere that envelops the glorious 
orb and constitutes the surface from which his efful- 
gence glows, is discerned. 

Thus the mind reveals to the ordinary observer 
only its objective phenomena which play upon the 
stage of common experience. But to the closer 
student it reveals two opposite realms of activity, 
the one above and the other below the plane of con- 
scious experience. The one above, the impalpable 
emanations which float from it into the invisible 
atmosphere, and constitutes an unrecognized aura of 
influences, may be likened unto the sun's photo- 
sphere, while the one beneath, the unexplored realm 
of the subconscious self, may be likened to the flam- 
ing but ordinarily unobserved corona. And as it is 
the sun's incessant conflagration which consumes 

[9] 



The Mastery of Mind. 



and thus illuminates the more refined and dissipated 
elements of the photosphere, so it is the constant 
activity of the objective and conscious mind which 
sends forth the less palpable emanations of its ac- 
tivity into the invisible realms of space. The active 
mind is little aware of these emanations, and little 
realizes their tremendous influence. Just as one 
might be imagined to be seated in the sun's inmost 
centre and be wholly unaware of the incandescent 
emanations which pass from it into the flaming 
envelope beyond. 

We are all ever aware of the palpable disk of the 
sun, just as we are ever aware of the activity of the 
conscious mind. But how seldom are we considerate 
of the volatile mental particles that float from it 
into the sensitive atmosphere which surrounds it 
and carries its effects infinite leagues beyond their 
origin. We too who look upon the sun's golden disk 
by day are little conscious of its red heart of fire 
which glows within the molten gold of its surface. 
Likewise we who catch but a passing glimpse of the 
active mind little discern the inner depths of cease- 
less energy which constitute the sleepless source of 
life's infinite promptings. 

But not until we realize the threefold phase of 
the mind's experiences do we grasp its tremendous 
potency or our responsible relation to it. Ignorance 

[10] 



The Mind. 



of this law lias brought untold suffering to individ- 
uals and the human race. Mothers, fathers, teach- 
ers, rulers, legislators, void of a knowledge of this 
penetrating principle of life, have wrecked charac- 
ters, individuals, kingdoms, while ignorant of their 
own sinister instrumentality. 

Little realizing the mental photosphere one's 
thoughts, passions, predilections generate, how many- 
mothers have been unconscious murderers, slaying 
not the vital force but the moral principle of their 
offspring. Had the mother of George Gordon, for 
instance, but understood that by slow stages she was 
poisoning the natively pure and ethereal sources of 
inspiration that welled in the breast of the future 
Lord Byron, she might have made his life as beauti- 
ful as his verse, and his soul as pure and pellucid as 
his liquid lines. But suffering puerile jealousy and 
bitter passion to seize her in the presence of her child 
till she learned, for no cause he gave her, to hate the 
fruit of her heart, she envenomed his soul and made 
him callous, heartless, cynical, and self-indulgent. 

How often have rulers caught in the swirl of a 
mental maelstrom been swept to their destruction, 
carrying with them the ruin of a nation, little know- 
ing the force that overpowered them. Had Louis XV. 
but known that to subject himself to the insinuating 
blandishments of feminine minds, whose seductive 

[11] 



The Mastery op Mind. 



emanations enervated his manhood and from whose 
grip he could not finally escape once he became 
their victim, he would have scorned the insinuating 
approaches of a Pompadour and escaped a Du 
Barry's scandalizing embraces. However, these sub- 
tle influences as often make for good and glory as fop 
unhappiness and defeat. Howbeit, the refined and 
recondite cause is seldom discerned. Sometimes a 
mere word, a chance acquaintance, a casual sugges- 
tion, weaves an unseen web of power around one's 
life that alters and defines its destiny. Had not 
Peter the Great, while jet an inconspicuous heredi- 
tary ruler, met Le Fort, the Swiss genius who in- 
spired him with a thousand new ideas and passion- 
ate resolves, he had never been known to history as 
the immortal forerunner of Kussia's reformation and 
the masterful builder of a gigantic empire. Some of 
the greatest achievements of art and literature owe 
their existence to this subtle law, of which so few 
are aware. Once the mental atmosphere is created 
around a life that lends to it inspiration and exult- 
ant hope, it may be lifted from dullness and obscur- 
ity to achievement and glory. It was the fortune of 
George Eliot to fall within the compass of that splen- 
did mental environment which hovered round the life 
of G. H. Lewes that awoke within her the inspiration 
to create literature which is now immortal. A cas- 
[12] 



The Mind 



ual conversation between Colonel Ingersoll and Gen- 
eral Lew Wallace in a passenger coach w^hile travel- 
ling across the country touched a chord in the heart 
of the latter that vibrated into the glorious drama of 
" Ben Hur," whose epochal career was one of the 
sensations of modern fiction. 

The first law, then, which we must observe in the 
study of the Mind, is that of mutual response or the 
reciprocity of environment. Each of us is clothed 
with an invisible aura composed of the mental eman- 
ations that float from our habitual thoughts and 
daily actions. He only succeeds who works with or 
against this influence, as it affects him for good or 
ill. Just as the swimmer betimes floats at ease upon 
the surface of the water and safely trusts the cur- 
rent to carry him toward the shore, so one who buf- 
fets the waves of life's sea may at times implicitly 
trust the current of some force that sweeps over him 
from the shores of other minds. If he has found 
them soothing, genial, exhilarating, he knows they 
are friendly and need not fear. But if by sudden 
contact their approach chills, unnerves, affrights and 
weakens, let him beware; the swifter he buffets the 
opposing waves and makes for the shore of personal 
safety the wiser he proves himself by discretion over 
valor. 

Each mind is in some way attuned to every other. 
[13] 



The Mastery of Mind, 



Either harmonious or inharmonious are the mutual 
chords. If thej respond to peace, they are attuned 
to harmony and happiness. If to discord, they 
jangle out of tune, and their note resounds with 
warning and approaching hazard. 

Each may test this law for himself. He who 
chooses wisely walks safely. 




[14] 




CHAPTER II. 

Cf)e ;^intl — {Continued). 

ECAUSE the mind is not an impalpable, 
insubstantial quantity, wholly independ- 
ent of the body, its influence on our 
lives is the more marvellous and stu- 
pendous. As the mind and body are so essen- 
tially correlated that no action in the one leaves the 
other without an impress, the permanency of their 
mutual activities is the more apparent. The move- 
ment of the mind does not merely glance athwart 
the surface of the brain, and thence fly off into space, 
as a sun ray seems to sport with a struggling plant. 
But precisely as the sun ray deposits in the growing 
vegetable some of its own substance and thus builds 
up its framew^ork, so the glancing thought sinks into 
the material substance of the brain and fashions its 
form and essence. And precisely as the substance 
of the sun ray can never again be demolished, but 
will continue to exist in some form even after the 

[15] 



The Mastery of Mind. 



vegetable is dissolved, so the thought that the mind 
impresses on the nerve substance is never lost, but 
continues to vibrate even after the substance of the 
body is dissolved in dust. In this sense, thoughts 
are things, as sunbeams are substance and form. A 
thought never dies, as no motion ever absolutely ex- 
pires. Somewhere its impetus is felt throughout the 
infinite, and some time will be discerned amid the 
vast forces of the world. 

Thoughts are not only things; they are also incar- 
nate characters. They become organized into living 
beings which betimes control us. The novel writer 
may create his characters, but, once created, they be- 
come his guide and inspiration. They speak from 
the pages to him and answer the problems that con- 
front him. Like spiritual forms they make their en- 
trances and exits to the solitary auditor who in- 
dites their deeds on the excited pages. They become 
to him as real, yea, more real, than the men and 
women he meets in the streets and shops. A literary 
critic was recently amazed to find a character he 
well knew, a demoralized poet, so literally portrayed 
in a current novel, that he was sure the writer must 
have known him. Yet he could not bring himself to 
believe that the woman who wrote the novel in view 
could have intimately known a character so degener- 
ate and debased. Such a fact alone would comprom- 

[16] 



The Mind. 



ise and defame her. Yet he made bold to ask her, for 
he could not imagine how the writer, an English- 
woman, could know this dreamy and unhappy wight 
whom she depicted as one of her conspicuous charac- 
ters. What was the critic's amazement to learn 
from her own lips that she had never seen him in the 
flesh nor knew that he had a bodily existence. 
" Yet," she said, " he is better known to me than a 
man in the flesh could be — he is more real, more con- 
sciously present, than any physical being I ever 
knew." 

HOW MENTAL IMAGES ARE MADE. 

It is within this dream world within a dream 
world, this deeper self of ourselves, where the mas- 
ter tragedies and simpler comedies of life are oft en- 
acted. Some image rises suddenly before us, not a 
visual form but a figment of the brain, that com- 
mands, overawes, amazes us, as without protest we 
yield to its approach. This mystic monitor oft 
prompts us to speech and deed we little contem- 
plated. This weird abductor oft leads us astray o'er 
wandering and misleading paths we had ne'er anti- 
cipated. Once do I well remember, while yet a cal- 
low youth, an uncanny experience that still per- 
plexes me. I had committed a lengthy speech, which 
I was to deliver before a large audience on a stated 

[17] 



The Mastery of Mind. 



occasion. It was my first public effort, and my 
teacher had coached and groomed me well for the 
ordeal. I had committed the piece so well that 
neither he nor I anticipated any treachery of mem- 
ory. I succeeded in the early part of the speech ad- 
mirably without a hint of failure. Then suddenly 
my mind became a blank ; I could not recall the next 
sentence or any future sentence to which, in my 
despair, I might leap for rescue. I paused and be- 
gan to feel the cold chills creeping down my spine. 
My instructor was sitting close behind me on the 
platform. Imagine my immense relief when I heard 
him distinctly pronounce the first word of the fugi- 
tive sentence that had so mercilessly fled from my 
memory! I finished then without another halt. As 
soon as the congratulations ceased and my teacher 
and I were alone I grasped his hand and thanked 
him heartily for his kind help. But what was my 
greater amazement when I learned that he was 
wholly ignorant of my embarrassing predicament, 
had not observed my hazardous pause, and dis- 
avowed having either prompted or even thought of 
prompting me! 

Whence then came that salutary voice? What un- 
canny spirit hovered nigh whose blessed whispering 
rescued me from disgrace? Was it not a submerged 
thought, a past experience, a buried memory, that 

[18] 



The Mind. 



seizing the moment of my mental vacuity, rushed in 
and smote the chords of my auricular organs, till 
they resounded with familiar speech? Was it not 
the echo of the inward voice I had so often heard in 
the silent rehearsals transmuted into audible reson- 
ance by the strain of the imagination? 

How often long buried memories come ranging 
down the corridors of the mind, startling by their 
weird anachronism the unsuspecting soul ! For 
years the past experience, the shape of some emascu- 
lated thought, has lain unsuspected in the tomb of 
oblivion, when suddenly its resurrected form appears 
even more vivid than at the first impression. Dur- 
ing the Spanish-American w^ar. General Joe Wheeler 
TN^as engaged in the attack on San Juan Hill. Sud- 
denly he saw the -Americans run with a wild rush 
and roar up the hill clamoring for victory. Fol- 
lowing them he shouted : " Up and at them, boys, the 
Yanks are running " ! For thirty years the image 
of the retreating forces of the Union soldiers he had 
seen somewhere during the Civil War lay silently 
entombed in the mausoleum of his soul. When, sud- 
denly, he little suspecting, the stone of the tomb is 
rolled away and the vivid form of the ancient ex- 
perience rises before him to deceive his suddenly 
bewildered vision. 

How this comes to pass is no longer so much a 
[19] 



The Mastery op Mind. 



mystery as it used to be. The fact that the mind's 
expressions are indelibly written in the archives of 
the flesh, that no wandering thought, no passing im- 
pulse, flees, without leaving its inerasable record 
behind, presents the clue to the solution of the 
problem. 

' It seems to be but a matter of cell-association. 
Once the cells are aggregated in certain shapes, cer- 
tain thoughts, notions, ideas, will follow. Instantly 
those cells are dissociated, the notions and thoughts 
vanish with them. If, then, by chance, by some sud- 
den concussion, by forcible suggestion, ought occurs 
to re-associate the mobile cells, instantly there flashes 
on the screen of the mental vision a reproduction of 
the forgotten experience. 

We are indeed of the earth earthy, howbeit our 
spirits soar to heaven. The spirit is willing but the 
flesh is weak, is a truly physiological, no less than a 
psychological, law. We do often the very thing we 
had least anticipated, and doing it by force of me- 
chanical habit are sometimes even ignorant of its 
performance. We are more often than we think 
somnambulists, even when we seem to be most awake. 

Professor Carpenter, the author of " Mental Physi- 
ology," narrates a circumstance that rllustrates this 
fact. He knew an eminent officer in the English 
army who had contracted the vulgar habit of pro- 

[20] 



The Mind. 



fanity, especially while giving orders during drill. 
He had been many years in the army, and the habit 
had become a part of his very nature. But he after- 
wards retired and entered into business, with the 
resolution firmly fixed to free himself from the un- 
happy characteristic. For years he succeeded quite 
easih^, till his associates forgot ever to anticipate 
profanity in his speech. 

But on a great military occasion he was invited to 
command a certain squad and train them in the nec- 
essary drill. A great number of his friends, both 
ladies and gentlemen, of course were present, and 
the drill proved to be most spectacular and fascin- 
ating. After the pageant, however, his nearest 
friends took him privately to task for having com- 
mingled his commanding orders with a ceaseless run 
of unnecessary and most obnoxious profanity. Look- 
ing in rapt amazement at them, he expressed his sur- 
prise at their accusation, for he insisted that he was 
not at any time during the drill conscious of even a 
prompting to use profane language. Dr. Carpenter 
says that everybody knew him to be a strictly honest 
man, and none would doubt his word. He had 
simply yielded to the unconscious prompting of an 
ancient and forgotten custom, which found its op- 
portunity to return to life through the avenue of the 
ideas that once more recalled the association of past 

[21] 



The Mastery of Mind. 



military experiences. We are accustomed to call 
this experience the result of the association of 
ideas; but we might as well call it the result of the 
re-aggregation of brain cells within certain cortical 
areas. 

For it is this fact that we must not allow ourselves 
to forget, and which must lie at the basis of all 
mental training. All our mental activities are in- 
erasably recorded in the fibres of the brain. If we 
seek to overcome unpleasant and criminating dispo- 
sitions, we must not fail to take into account these 
invisible writings which are inscribed on the minute 
palimpsests of the cranial cells. How to modify 
these writings, how to so alter the disposition of the 
cells that shall associate in the manner we desire 
and not in the manner of past mechanical associ- 
ations, is the problem we must attempt to solve. In 
a future chapter we hope to attack this problem 
with, we trust, some success. 

At this juncture we shall drop the following hint. 
While it is true that the brain fibres constitute the 
physical pages on which are inscribed the mental 
activities of each individual, we must not forget that 
the mental activities are themselves, to a large de- 
gree, under the control of our desires and education. 
To say that the brain basis is essential to the 



[22] 



The Mind. 



thought, is not to say that the thought is bound and 
confirmed bj the brain substance. 

Thought itself is a free force that percolates the 
fibres of the brain, conditioned only in its expression 
by the limitations of the physical organs. Thought 
is manifestly an energy superior to the instrument 
through which it is expressed. If it were not, then 
there would be no expanse, no growth of thought. 
The fact that thought evolves and expands in the 
individual, parallel with the higher complexity of the 
brain development, does not necessarily indicate that 
the thought exudes from the cell-formation, but 
rather that the thought seeks to express itself 
through more highly developed organs, and waits till 
such organs have been unfolded. " The only tenable 
supposition is, that mental and physical proceed to- 
gether, as undivided twins. When, therefore, we 
speak of a mental cause, a mental agency, we have 
always a two-sided cause; the effect produced is not 
the effect of mind alone, but of mind in company 
with body." (Bain— "Mind and Body.") 

VICARIOUS FUNCTIONING OF MENTAL 
FACULTIES. 

The fact that thought or mental agency, however,, 
is a distinctive force which operates upon, although 
in parallel lines with the physical organs, is illus- 
[23] 



The Mastery of Mind. 



trated by what is known as the vicarious office of 
cell-systems, which take up the work that has been 
dropped by other organs which have been mutilated. 
If one sense has been impaired, it frequently follows 
that another of the senses will be intensely magnified 
to compensate the loss. The blind who still retain 
their hearing, have a phenomenally acute ear. Or 
if they be dumb their sense of touch is extraordi- 
narily developed. I once found a deaf, dumb and 
blind man, who prosecuted a most successful retail 
stationery business. In early morning he sold the 
papers and never made a mistake. If he were given 
a bill he felt it for but an instant and easily distin- 
guished its denomination. He felt the difference 
between a two and a five dollar bill; between a ten 
and a twenty dollar bill. He was an old man and 
had been deaf, dumb, and blind almost all his life, 
yet had so cultivated the phenomenal sense of touch 
as to make it substitute the offices of the deprived 
senses of the e^^e, the ear, and the organ of speech. 

Men have been known to do marvellous works of 
penmanship and draughtsmanship, with their toes, 
having been deprived of the use of their arms and 
hands. Even in experiments tried on frogs and 
chickens, where portions of the brain have been 
excised, and thus the animals have been deprived of 
the use of certain organs, it has been observed that, 

[24] 



The Mixd. 



after awhile, some other organ or nerve centre will 
appropriate the work of the deprived centre by 
vicarious adaptation. 

If this be true, then it is apparent that the men- 
tal energy, which at one time was exercised on a 
certain brain centre, having lost the instrumentality 
of such a centre, does not cease to exist, but mani- 
fests its continued existence by the appropriation of 
another cell-centre. The mental agency is thus 
shown to be a free force or energy, which moves 
among the fluidic substances of the nervous system 
and the brain, and adjusts them to its particular 
requirements. However, though a free force, it is 
not so free that it can be operated absolutely void 
of material association. But the fact that it is a 
force which can be made to exercise its presence on 
the material substances of the brain and body, af- 
fords us the clue to its cultivation and adaptation to 
our daily necessities. 

Let the thoughts be so guided and controlled that 
they shall effect such cell associations and physical 
substrata, as shall be for our benefit and highest cul- 
ture. If we have by habit and ill-usage accustomed 
certain physical aggregations in our cell organisms, 
why shall we despair because of our bondage and not 
rather set about to reorganize and develop other 
cell-formations that shall effectuate our happiness. 

[26] 



The Mastery of Mind. 



THE POWER OF PERSONALITY. 

There is no cause for despair in the fact that our 
mental energies are operated through a physical ma- 
chinery. That by no means proves that the ma- 
chinery itself is not still subject to our control, 
manipulation, and reformation. The body is still the 
slave of the mind, if the mind so wills it. The cell- 
centres are still subject to the command of the will, 
if the will so determines. If physically we are not 
free-agents, logically we are. For though apparently 
limited by the flesh, we are conscious of the capacity 
of the will to move and decide as we determine. If 
we are not in fact free agents, we nevertheless act 
as if we were. And practically that makes us the 
free agents that we feel ourselves to be. Whatever 
physiology, psychology, or philosophy may say to 
the contrary, each of us acts his part in life with the 
conviction that his battle is fought out by himself 
alone, and that nothing predetermines victory or 
defeat. 

" And so I live, you see, 
Go through the world, try, prove, reject, 
Prefer, still struggling to effect 
My warfare ; happy that I can 
Be crossed and thwarted as a man. " 

It is true that we are whelmed and moved by 
forces that flow into us. We think the thoughts that 

[26] 



The Mind. 



are thought into us. We do not originate thought, 
but thought awakens our thinking. The infinite is 
replete with multifarious ideas or mental impulses 
that have floated down the centuries, since the 
primal fancies of primitive man were conjured by 
passing wind and boisterous elements. We are born 
into this sea of thoughts. As a fish thrives only in 
its native watery element, so the mind of man thrives 
only in a sea of mental phantasms. What we are 
and become is the result of what mental currents we 
meet in the vast ocean of being and the effect they 
have upon us. 

But because we are thus environed by an invisible 
ocean of mental forces, is not to conclude that these 
forces become the absolute moulders of our being and 
makers of our destiny. While we are surrounded 
and invaded, we must remember that within ourselves 
there is aggregated a vast number of individualized 
forces which constitute our personality. These are 
the opposing powers we may bring to play on sinis- 
ter and obnoxious forces that would o'ermaster us. 
There is no authority in the stars, whatever possible 
truth there may be in astrology, to command our 
destiny, be we but opposing and obstreperous enough 
to parry with it and assert our independence and 
confident assurance. The stream of influences which 
has swept down the centuries and entered the chan- 

[27] 



The Mastery of Mind. 



nels of our blood, is not sufficient of itself to shape 
our character or complexion our wills, be we but 
conscious of the resident forces we may conjure, to 
drive away the pernicious intruders. When we shall 
learn so to adjust ourselves to the forces that play 
upon us, that we shall compel them to be our bene- 
factors and not our foes, we shall have learned the 
secret of life's success. But why should we not be 
able to apply such a law in the growth of human 
character as well as in the growth of plants? We 
know that every agriculturist and horticulturist im- 
proves the product of the soil, not by adding a sin- 
gle force to what already exists in nature, but merely 
by learning how to readjust those forces to the seed 
or plant he is cultivating, so that the desired growth 
shall be enhanced. One of the most ingenious in- 
ventors of our day, Mr. Orville Leach, of Providence, 
claims that he has created wonders in the growth of 
plants by a simple application of this law. He con- 
ceived that radio-activity is a principle of all ma- 
terial substances, and that by learning how to adjust 
this interior force to any growth desired it could be 
immensely enhanced. He believes that the mutual 
use of heat and cold by rapid succession generates 
the force known as radio-activity, and using this 
theory he claims to have produced startling results. 
He covered the ground around the plant so that the 

[28] 



The Mind. 



heat of the sun could not penetrate the soil, keeping 
it cool ; the plant itself he grew against a red brick 
wall, whose reflection of the sun's rays, condensed 
chiefly in the red, so the hottest of the sun's rays 
y.'ould strike directly upon the plant and thus in- 
tensify its heat. As a result, he claims to have im- 
mensely quickened the growth and expanded its size 
beyond the normal proportions. Whether Mr. 
Leach's theory be correct or not, w^hat he did was 
merely to utilize such forces as exist in the plant 
and in the environing elements, and so mutually 
adjust them that their inter-functioning would 
result beneficially to it and not to its injury. 

This is precisely the law we must learn to utilize 
in human life. Just as all the forces essential to the 
largest growth of the plant are inherent in it, and 
will be exercised to its highest advantage, be they 
but properly adjusted to the external environment, 
so within ourselves there exist all the forces essential 
to our noblest unfoldment and stoutest requirements, 
whose achievements depend only on our intelligence 
in their discernment and use. We have no just com- 
plaint against Nature. She has built up within us 
the sustaining energies, as she has evolved an intelli- 
gence sufficient to apprehend their existence and 
application. If we fail to utilize the law, we crimin- 
ate ourselves. Nature indeed is good, for all her ten- 

[29] 



The Masteey of Mind. 



dencies are toward harmonious growth and mutual 
harmony. Else there were no world, no cosmos, no 
universe replete with mutually functioning spheres, 
which act like organs in an infinite body. If ill 
comes to us, it is but the result of our own perverse 
use of what was convertible to our good. 

Nature teaches us how to carve our destiny; but 
too oft we accuse her of compelling what we our- 
selves have invited. 



Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, 
Which we ascribe to heaven." 




[30] 




CHAPTER III. 

N the subsoil of the mind the seeds of 
awakening thoughts are planted. In the 
subsoil of the heart lie deeply-concealed 
the propulsive powers of the soul that 
make for character and compelling action. Long 
ages antecedent to conscious thought invisible 
powers have worked secretly on the sensitive chords 
of the heart, leaving inerasable impressions on the 
responsive strings. 

Thoughts are themselves creators of thought, as 
one sea-wave generates another in its path of agita- 
tion. But the primal mother of all thought is the 
emotion from whose travail leaps some child of the 
throbbing brain. 

Only when the heart burns is the mind luminant. 
Only when the breast is writhed or elated is the 
brain quickened with the living thought. To think 
keenly one must first have felt deeply. Myriads of 
thoughts that now swarm through the realm of the 
conscious brain are but the lingering wraiths of 
[31] 



The Mastery of Mind. 



ancient emotions that have lain long in the limbo of 
oblivion. Some sudden incident — the glimpse of a 
forgotten face, the touch of a tender hand, the angle 
of gabled roof, the flit of a bird, the bark of a dog, — 
stirs again the smouldering flames of the heart and 
calls into being a thought that points as a guide-post 
on the highway of some life. 

THE SECRET SPRINGS OF DESIRE. 

We are so curiously made that we can but little 
tell what effect an experience will have upon one's 
entire career. We are divided, so to speak, into 
various compartments, and each of these constitutes 
almost a distinct personality, so that one conscious- 
ness lies upon another, as the various strata of the 
earth are conjoined. Seldom do we experience con- 
sciously more than one personality which we regard 
as ourself. But sometimes we are suddenly aroused 
from the continuity of our self-conscious existence 
and are seized wth an impulse that seems to be 
foreign to our nature. 

Sometimes such sudden awakening wholly changes 
the quality of our characters, acting like a dam 
against the waters of life, and diverting them into 
an unfrequented channel. We have not been made 
aware, perhaps, for years of the revolutionary effects 

[32] 



The Heaet. 



of such experiences, but when least suspecting they 
suddenly gush forth from the nether spiritual depths, 
like the bursting of a subterranean fountain. 

Horace Fletcher, the eminent Optimist, narrates 
an incident in his life which illustrates the sudden 
energy of a new idea that wholly transforms one's 
future. A Japanese Buddhist had said to him : 
" You must get rid of anger and worry." " But," 
said I, "is that possible?" "Yes," he replied, "it 
is possible to the Japanese, and it ought to be possi- 
ble to you." 

" On my way back I could think of nothing else 
but the words, ' get rid,' ' get rid ; ' and the idea must 
have continued to possess me during my sleeping 
hours, for the first consciousness in the morning 
brought back the same thought, with the revelation 
of a discovery, which framed itself into reasoning, 
^ If it is possible to get rid of anger and worry, why 
is it necessary to have them at all? I felt the 
strength of the argument, and at once accepted the 
reasoning. The baby had discovered that it could 
walk. It would scorn to creep any longer. From 
the instant I realized that these cancer-spots of anger 
and worry were removable, they left me. With the 
discovery of their weakness they were exorcised. 
From that time, life has had an entirely new as- 
pect " 

c [33] 



The Mastery of Mind. 



Doubtless deep in the heart of this man, who has 
since his Japanese experience proved himself so use- 
ful in awakening the hope and prosperity of many a 
despairing soul, there had lain the seed of many 
past experiences that promptly responded to the new 
idea the Japanese Buddhist had inculcated in his 
mind. Long had he become ashamed of his anger 
and worry, as many of us so often do. Long had he 
felt that he must rid himself of them, yet never 
dreamed such a possibility was within his powers. 
When he meets the teacher who assures him others 
have really done what he had so long hoped to attain, 
but never felt strong enough to attempt, the subter- 
ranean waters of his soul rise at once to mingle with 
the new stream that trickles through his conscious- 
ness from a foreign source. 

Here, again, is another great soul who according to 
his own confession was his mother's dear child, yet 
till almost full grown had " never gotten from behind 
the stove.'' His heart burns to do something of im- 
portance for his age, jet the way is not clear. It is 
Pestalozzi. He tries law, theology, but of no avail. 
He fails; such pursuits are distasteful to him. But 
suddenly he falls on Rousseau's ^' Emile," and with 
eyes reddening and flooded he reads what calls up 
the dead ideas of his buried past, that throng the pal- 
ace of his soul with a thousand inspirations. He has 

[34] 



The Heart. 



found himself; he must be a teacher — a teacher of 
the natural method. His whole life is changed. His 
work and fame are already immortal. 

Our lives hang sometimes like a slender cord in the 
wind, easily moved whithersoever the first breath 
shall direct them. The heart is often like a flickering 
flame fed by some invisible substance. We cannot 
tell on what it feeds and grows, but from some mys- 
terious source it gains its sustenance. 

Trembling in its profound depths are feeble and 
unorganized emotions, appetites, desires, yearnings, 
which need but the guiding hand of some potent idea 
to muster and discipline them into formidable activ- 
ity and rational coherence. 

THE DANGERS OF DESPONDENCY. 

The chief cause of despair to all ambitious souls is 
the indecision of character which necessarily hangs 
upon the uncertainty of life's objective end. They 
feel the proud impulse of some noble ambition, yet 
its call is indistinct and inarticulate. They feel it 
feebly, a faint and fading echo of a distant call that 
rings far down the avenue of life. They feel the 
urge, as one who desires to enter the lists at the 
race, but is uncertain of his capacity, and fears the 
too great distance of the goal. They have not jet 

[35] 



The Mastery of Mind. 



found themselves. The pall of self-fear hangs like 
a blight upon them. 

They feel that life is worth while, because of an 
instinctive, elemental prophecy which agonizes them 
by its colorless vagueness, yet shrink from accepting 
its serious import, because they cannot clearly de- 
cipher its meaning. Many a soul seeing thus far — 
peering out into the impenetrable darkness of a 
blank and undecipherable future — has fallen on the 
dagger of despair and thus silenced the thousand 
confusing voices that challenged him to frightening 
adventure. 

There is scarcely a conspicuous figure in history 
whose life has not at one time been dragged across 
these bloody crags of disappointment and threatened 
with self-destruction against their jutting sides. 

Such was the melancholia of Leo Tolstoy when he 
strung the long cords from the ceiling and arranged 
the noose against his bed-post so that by self-manip- 
ulation it would grip his throat and let loose the 
chafed soul within that yearned to flee as a bird. In 
his case, the gloomy aspect of life was the result of 
ancient theological teachings which, somehow, like 
the witch's broth, conjured vague and dreamy figures 
in his consciousness that killed all hope and scourged 
him with whips of desperation. 

" I felt," he says (see James' Variety of Experi- 
[36] 



The Heart. 



ences," p. 153)," that something had broken within 
me on which my life had always rested, that I had 
nothing left to hold on to, and that morally my life 
had stopped. It cannot be said exactly that I wished 
to kill myself, for the force which drew me away 
from life was fuller, more powerful, more general, 
than any mere desire. It was a force like my old 
aspiration to live, only it impelled me in the opposite 
direction. It was an aspiration of my whole being to 
get out of life. . . . And yet I could give no 
reasonable meaning to any actions of my life. And I 
was surprised that I had not understood them from 
the beginning. My state of mind was as if some 
wicked and stupid jest was being played upon me by 
some one. . . . Yet while my intellect was work- 
ing, something else was working in me, too ; — a con- 
sciousness of life, as I call it, which was like a force 
that obliged my mind to fix itself in another direc- 
tion and draw me out of my situation of despair." 

Here we see a clear exposition of the dual powers, 
both the result of antecedent teachings, environ- 
ment and craving, that occupied different planes of 
Tolstoy's nature. The one, the first, infantile, youth- 
ful, initial thirst for life — the deep, overwhelming, 
maddening joy of mere existence. This was the 
natural, innate, pagan impulse, born with life itself, 



[87] 



The Mastery of Mind. 



and uncolored with a tinge of thought that be- 
gloomed its unfoldment. 

The other, the second state of consciousness, the 
almost equally strong impulse to fly from the day 
into the eternal dark, to gouge out the eyes of the 
soul that it might never again behold the false lights 
of the deceiving skies, was begotten by thought that 
sprung from the heart's profound disappointment 
with all of life's primal and inspiring promises. 

Clearly, the heart is the reservoir of the myriad 
emotions that so often play upon the mind, and sink, 
we know not where, into the mists of the speechless 
night. Yet their tongues are not forever silenced; 
for when occasion comes they speak again, some- 
times with stronger accent than when first out- 
spoken. Little do we know what visitations we lay 
up for ourselves on some unsuspecting day, when 
with clamorous voices old and forgotten guests, we 
once thoughtlessly or with passionate embrace en- 
tertained, return and cry for the old, familiar wel- 
come. Not always, indeed, are they welcome when 
thus like Banquo's ghost they sit an uninvited guest 
at the banquet of life. How eager are we, far more 
so than the distracted Macbeth, to drive them from 
our eyes, bringing now as they do confusion and 
bewilderment. 

All the impulses of the heart, anger and joy, love 
[38] 



The Heart. 



and hatred, peace and worry, hope and despair, 
purity and licentiousness, kindliness and embitter- 
ment, are but bubblings from an ancient fountain 
whose waters have long swelled with the streams 
that have flowed into it from the passing emotions of 
the breast. 

Too reckless are we of what visitors of the mind 
we entertain. They sit too vulgarly, often, on the 
cushioned seats of our heart, to leave behind the in- 
fectious impress of their presence. We receive them 
oft too cordially who conceal the stiletto that invites 
us to our unhappy end. 

We do not often enough convince ourselves that 
thoughts and feelings pile up with swift increase, like 
the playful snowball of our childhood, till they as- 
sume the vast proportions of the ghostly snow man 
that haunts us in our dreams, nor fades from our 
wakeful imaginings. 

The heart is cut through with myriad canals into 
which the swift waters of past experience wildly 
flow, nor cease till new canals are cut of deeper beds 
to tease away the ancient waters. Old friends will 
ever return unless they are barred by the advent of 
the new. If we have long suffered ourselves to wel- 
come the ruffled visage of anger till he is so much 
under our hypnotic spell that a mere twitch of a 
muscle or blink of an eye conjures him, not until 
[39] 



The Mastery of Mind. 



kindliness and love have been made so long the 
habitues of our hearts that instinctively they ap- 
proach at the sign by which formerly anger was sum- 
moned, shall we be free from the domination of the 
latter. 

In the following pages we shall hope to disclose 
something of the mechanical instruments with which 
a human being is endowed whose intelligent use may 
assist him to master the tyrants that sometime have 
usurped the throne of the heart. For we are so made 
that if we but rationally employ the mechanism of 
our bodies, we may overcome faults that seem purely 
spritual. The mutual reflexivity of soul and body, 
mind and heart, are so absolute that one will surely 
fail who considers but one side of the shield to the 
exclusion of the other. The heart is the seat of the 
emotions, but the emotions spring from the mechan- 
ism of the flesh. To understand the seemingly mys- 
terious workings of the heart, we must know whence 
spring the forces that operate its organs. 

For the purpose of these essays let us classify 
these emotions that relate to mankind, or natural 
relationship, as seated in the heart; and those that 
relate to man's craving for the Infinite, or extra- 
natural, as seated in the soul. The emotions that 
relate especially to man we may enumerate as fol- 
lows : — 

[40] 



The Heart. 



CLASSIFICATION OF ETHICAL IMPULSES. 



GOOD QUALITIES: 

SYMPATHY. 

KINDLmESS. 

FORGIVENESS. 

HONOR. 

TRUTHFULNESS. 

TEMPERANCE. 

SELF-RELIANCE. 

TRUSTWORTHINESS. 

SINCERITY. 

TIDINESS. 

MODESTY. 

HONESTY. 

SELF-RESTRAINT. 

PROTECTION. 



BAD QUALITIES: 

INDIFFERENCE. 

ANGER. 

HATRED. 

JEALOUSY. 

MENDACITY. 

SENSUALITY. 

SUPERCILIOUSNESS. 

FAITHLESSNESS. 

DECEITFULNESS. 

SLOVENLINESS. 

IMPUDICITY. 

STEALTHFULNESS. 

CRUELTY. 

DESTRUCTION. 



A mere glance at these opposing columns enables a 
normal person to clioose at once which he would pre- 
fer as qualifj'ing his moral characteristics. It is 
also at once apparent that each of these qualities has 
its rise in the experiences of the heart. Each is the 
symbol of some emotion sometime felt by every nor- 
mal human being. Why then are some persons easily 
distinguished as possessors of the qualities in one 
column rather than in the other? 

Why as a rule cannot a single person be possessed 
equally of the qualities in both of the columns; or 
why not of some of the qualities in each of the lists 

[41] 



The Mastery of Mind. 



arranged? Manifestly, because the qualities in both 
columns are mutually antagonistic; they cannot 
blend or be made to harmonize. 

Kindliness can by no possibility abide with hatred; 
peace cannot find a home with anger. Modesty and 
impudence cannot be residents of the same breast, 
nor shine forth in the same countenance. Trust- 
worthiness and deceitfulness are mutually neutral- 
izing, and if the one is ascendant the other must 
needs disappear. Self-restraint and cruelty cannot 
simultaneously prompt the heart nor find expression 
in the self -same act. Sympathy and indifference can- 
not coincide, nor can refinement be housed beneath 
the same roof as slovenliness. Truthfulness van- 
ishes when mendacity conquers as temperance flees 
before the grossness of sensuality. 

HOW THE MORAL CHARACTER IS MADE. 

Each individual is characterized by his emphasis 
of the qualities classed in either list. But only when 
the distinctive quality has been sufficiently culti- 
vated to establish its permanence does it build the 
character which it symbolizes. Incidental indul- 
gences do not necessarily carve the final lineaments 
of character. Habit is the chisel that cuts the moral 
marble into the shapes its promptings pattern. Once 

[42] 



The Heart. 



the disposition is indulged it has dug a channel, 
howbeit at first but faint, for its return, and, oft re- 
peated, flows freely through its deepening bed to the 
heart, — the source whence it sprung into being. 

Thus we observe that love is the commonest of all 
human feelings and most easily conjured in the 
human breast. For by love is the child begotten, 
and in love brought forth. The mother's love is the 
first stimulus that awakens the consciousness of the 
young soul and the kiss the first symbol of life's 
meaning which the child discerns. From pre-human 
sources love springs instinctively in the loving breast. 
The mother animal conceives in love the offspring 
that shall nestle beneath her shadow, and by that 
same love is the child succored and defended when 
tempests beset it or foes pursue. For countless ages 
has this emotion been wreathed around the human 
heart till its very tendrils are braided into the throb- 
bing fibres and death almost ensues if they be sun- 
dered. Love so long entertained and cultivated 
springs spontaneous in the human breast. It is the 
easiest emotion to arouse; there is no human being 
who is insensible to its approach. Could we but 
realize this, we should cease to multiply criminals by 
a mistaken system of justice and seek rather to cure 
than to curse the unfortunate. 

Hate comes late into the human heart. No child 
[43] 



The Mastery of Mind. 



hates persistently. If hate ever visits his young 
heart it is to amaze and frighten. The child re- 
joices when it vanishes and leaves him free again. 
Not as he instinctively welcomes love on. its 
approach, does he rejoice when hate intrudes. In- 
stinctively he feels hate is an enemy, while love is a 
friend. He cannot analyze his feelings or explain 
his reasons, but he knows that hate augurs ill for his 
young life and love is the harbinger of happiness. 

They only are worthy parents who recognize this 
law and instead of inflicting needlessly severe pun- 
ishment that hardens the heart of the young, seek by 
gentleness to conjure into life the smitten and dying 
love of the trembling victim. Could there be more 
mothers like the ancient matron Cornelia, and more 
judges like the conspicuous Lindsey of Denver, the 
homes of mankind would be purer and prisons 
would cease to be purveyors to the lords of hell. 

When angry, hateful feelings are engendered in the 
young heart, its native love soon flees and evil 
thoughts obtrude to steal away its peace. Had 
Byron's mother been a sincere and noble-spirited 
woman he would have given to the world perhaps a 
character as delicately and exquisitely moulded as 
his symmetrical lines. But because his mother was 
selfish, narrow-minded, jealous, and contemptuous, 
she expelled from his young heart the natural love 

[44] 



The Heaet. 



that first awoke. Long indulged, the evil feeling 
grows till, like the Upas tree, it overshadows and 
blights with its poisonous breath all that it ap- 
proaches. At first, by a single forceful energy of the 
mind, it can be banished; but once it is lodged in 
the seat of habit — the sub-conscious realm of activity 
— it waxes strong and defiant and can be overthrown 
only by most strenuous effort. 

We are deceived by our evil impulses because they 
suggest to us their friendliness. We believe they 
have come to help us, and though our reason may 
rebel we find it difficult to resist their sweet per- 
suasiveness. This is the unfailing sign of auto- 
suggestion or self-hypnotizations. Once in that state 
we cannot force ourselves to believe that the evil im- 
pulse is sinister or malicious. We are assured that 
il; is a benignant and gracious visitor from the skies. 

When Othello first hears Cassio's insinuations he 
is roused into furious denunciation. He would not 
believe the accusation and in spite of his trust of 
Cassio would spew it from his mouth. 

If thou dost slander lier and torture me, 

Never pray more ; abandon all remorse ; 

On horror's head horrors accumulate ; 

Do deeds to make heaven weep, all earth amaz'd, 

For nothing canst thou to damnation add 

Greater than that. 

[45] 



The Masteky of Mind. 



It had been easy, had Othello persisted in this state 
of mind, soon to dispel the malignant fever that 
consumed his blood. But though at first he saw 
aright that suspicion was a foe and not a friend, ere 
long the vision changed, and to his mind it appeared 
a gracious visitor from heaven come to bless and suc- 
cor him. At length by long brooding, and a willing 
ear to jealousy's insinuating words, suspicion has 
so honeycombed the foundations of his heart that its 
triumph is assured. Completely captured by the ap- 
parition of his wife's unfaithfulness, his entire na- 
ture changes, and what formerly breathed for love 
now is aflame with bitterness and revenge. 

O, that the slave had forty thousand tongues; 
One is too poor, too weak for my revenge 

Look here, lago 

All my fond love thus do I blow to heaven ; 
'T is gone. 

Then the fires of hell consume his soul, and he 
plunges into its black depths to gratify the perverse 
desire of his heart for grief more grievous still. But 
there is a bright side to the picture. For as by indul- 
gence evil grows, so by a like law goodness expands 
and multiplies. All the virtues may be so empha- 
sized and repeated that their action becomes me- 

[46] 



The Heaet. 



chanical, and the character finds it impossible to 
resist them. 

When once character is fixed, it persists along 
lines of least resistance. So long as no great crisis 
overtakes one, whose convulsions shatter the con- 
tinuity of one's consciousness and split it in twain, 
the formation of character may be considered 
established when mature years are attained. 

But all the education of childhood and youth 
should be directed to the guidance and development 
of the nobler emotions that when they shall have be- 
come full grown they shall be the climax of a full 
and rounded life. 

By the law of accumulative energy, indeed, the 
cosmic forces build in the human consciousness the 
conserving forces of the social life. Society would 
still be chaotic and the individual remain a savage, 
were it not that by slow degrees, through the name- 
less centuries, the primitive impulses have been 
sloughed off and substituted by those of refine- 
ment and philosophical prowess. Thus have sym- 
pathy, association, kinship, and nationality been es- 
tablished. Thus has man risen from satyr to saint, 
from a Caliban to a Columbian. Thus has the primal 
impulse of revenge softened into the passion for for- 
giveness. Thus has savage tribalism merged into 
national patriotism; and thus is selfish patriotism 

[47] 



The Mastery of Mind. 



slowly passing into world-unity and human brother- 
hood. 

In the meadows of the heart spring the flowers 
that promise the peace of humankind. " One touch 
of Nature makes the whole world kin." 




[48] 




CHAPTER IV. 

€f)e ^0ul* 

^ INCE man began to think, speculation 
concerning the soul has been rife. That 
man lias a soul, has long been a disputed 
and unsolved proposition. That man 
is a soul has long since been demonstrated by 
history and the growth of individual life. If we 
think of the soul as a transient visitor of the body 
which shall make good its escape at the first oppor- 
tunity; which is imprisoned in this form of clay and 
ever restive in its confinement, we shall doubtless 
contemplate something that is inexplicable. 

Concerning this foreign soul Plato wrote entranc- 
ingly, and philosophy and religion have ever charm- 
ingly discoursed. Nevertheless, its contemplation 
has been vague and fanciful. Because it has been 
conceived as a being indigenous to another world, its 
presence in this world has ever been regarded as 
that of an interloper. One who realizes its ham- 
D [49] 



The Mastery of Mind. 



pered residence in this house of clay bemoans its 
fate and yearns for the hour of its escape. It is here 
not only a prisoner, but a sick, cadaverous patient. 
It eagerly awaits the hour of its rescue from for- 
bidding bondage. " All the days of my appointed 
time," it cries, "will I wait till my change come." 

This theory of a separate, mysterious soul, tempor- 
arily abiding with the body, has led to much mysti- 
cal and mystifying speculation, which has afforded 
but little profit to the race. Plato conceived it as the 
embodiment of fixed Ideas, a sort of mystical mould 
into which the life of man is poured or accord- 
ing to which it is patterned. Leibnitz thought 
man " existed in our ancestors as far back as Adam, 
in the forms of organized bodies." The Egyptian 
priests taught that the soul passed through the 
bodies of many animals and returned to the form of 
a human body only after wandering thus for three 
thousand years. 

Some taught that the soul existed somewhere as a 
sort of psychic embryo and was carried by a bird, 
generally the stork, and implanted in the breast of 
the mother from whom the child was to spring. 
Others thought that the great Creator himself gen- 
erated each soul, out of hand, and directed its de- 
velopment in the life of each human being as He de- 
termined. Again, still others thought that the soul 

[50] 



The Soul. 



has always existed, co-ordinately with the beginning 
of the world, and that it passes through millions of 
different lives to return to itself in some final period 
when it shall attain the knowledge of all its past 
incarnations and rest forever from its laborious 
migrations. 

However beautifully these theories have been elab- 
orated, and in whatsoever noble religions they may 
have been evolved, nevertheless always have they 
been vague, mystifying, and beyond the clear compre- 
hension of the human mind. 

When Mahomet was asked by the rabbins who 
were testing the truth of his supposed revelation of 
Wisdom, '^ What is the Soul " ? he begged of them 
for three days to reflect. Then he returned and asked 
the rabbins if they knew what the sun is or whence 
came its light. They could not tell him. ^^ Neither 
can I," he replied, " tell you what is the soul. It is 
a mystery, of which God has reserved to himself 
alone the knowledge. Man can only know what God 
vouchsafes to teach him.'' 

There have, however, always been keen thinkers 
who sought to free the mind from the mysterious 
notion of the soul by many curious explanations. 
Thus Aristotle made the soul but little more than a 
faculty of the physical body. He claimed that it re- 
sulted from the organism of the body, as the " ax- 

[61] 



The Mastery of Mind. 



ness " of the axe necessarily exists because of the 
axe. In modern times Huxley ridiculed this notion 
by speaking of the holority of the clock and the 
aquacity of the water, as if they were distinct enti- 
ties essentially associated with these bodies. 

All these confusing ideas were richly set off in 
metrical verse by a quaint writer, (Sir John 
Davies, ^^ Nosce Teipsum'^) thus: 

" One thinks the soule is aire; another fire; 
Another blood, diffus'd about the heart ; 
Another saith the elements conspire, 
And to her essence each doth give a part. 

Musicians think our soules are harmonies ; 

Physicians hold that they complexions be ; 
Epicures make them swarmes of atomies ; 

Which' doe by chance into our bodies flee. 

Some think one general soule fills every braine; 

As the bright sunne sheds light in every starre ; 
And others think the name of soule is vaine, 

And that we only well-mix'd bodies are." 

THE FORCES THAT COMPOSE THE SOUL. 

Seeing, then, that there has ever been such con- 
fusion in human thought concerning the soul, we 
may justly relinquish the hope of acquiring any prac- 
tical value from any, even the mo^ ingenious, specu- 
lations regarding it. As this book is written wholly 
for practical purposes, we shall of course not pursue 

[52] 



The Soul. 



such vague ideas any further, but undertake another 
interpretation of the soul which shall aid us more 
effectually in planning for the success of this tem- 
poral life. We shall not therefore study the soul as 
an embodied organism, we shall not regard it as a 
personality, either organized or unorganized, spirit- 
ual or material. We shall merely undertake to ap- 
prehend the soul as an aggregation of forces that are 
associated in each living organism, and whose pres- 
ence impresses upon such an organism a distinctive 
character and career. All forces are impalpable, in- 
visible, hidden, and we can apprehend them only in 
their effects. So far as we know, there is no differ- 
ence in their natures between the force we call sun- 
light and the force we call horse-power, but the two 
appear very different to us because of the wholly 
different kinds of work they perform. Therefore we 
define them as different forces, though their essential 
natures are wholly unknown to us. However, we 
can readily see that one of these forces is much more 
refined and impalpable than the other. The horse we 
see in his movements and can quite well understand 
the laws of physics by which he performs his work. 
The feet of the horse act as a fulcrum and the breast 
as the lever, so that the capacity of the leverage 
may be easily calculated. But when we speak of 
sunlight, it is more difficult for us to discern the law 

[63] 



The Mastery of Mind. 



by which it accomplishes what it does. It too has a 
pulling power, as evidenced in the tides and the 
growth of plants and animals. But its fulcrum and 
its lever are not clearly perceived. Hence the force 
by which it operates is more recondite, less visible, 
that is, less material, apparently, than the force that 
operates in the work of horse-power. 

Electricity is another force that works according to 
laws which are even less manifest than those of the 
chemical work of the sunlight. So recondite, occult, 
are the laws of electricity that man has as yet but 
superficially discovered them, and for many millions 
of years man had not even a conception of their ex- 
istence. There are still finer forces, even, than elec- 
tricity, such as the X-ray's and those of radio- 
activity, of which we have as yet but the vaguest 
conception. 

Clearly, then, the farther we remove from the 
plane of coarse materiality the finer and less visible 
becomes the operation of the forces that prevail. 
When we enter the realm of the soul, therefore, we 
are not surprised to come in the presence of forces 
which are so impalpable, recondite and refined that 
they easily escape the apprehension of the keenest in- 
tellects. Indeed, only in the present age have we 
been permitted to think of the operation of the 
human mind, in the shape of thoughts, as the work- 

[54] 



The Soul. 



ing of a force akin to the powers of the physical 
forces. Once such an idea would have been regarded 
as coarsely material and proven so repulsive as to 
have been denied even decent consideration by the 
elect. But to-day we are not so disposed. 

SOUL FORCE MEASURED IN FOOT-POUNDS. 

We can easily contemplate the workings of the 
mind as the manifestation of a force. For now we 
know we can compute in foot-pound measurements 
the result of such workings. It has been shown, for 
instance, that when a person is thinking the blood 
rushes quickly to that particular portion of the brain 
which is especially exercised by the thought that may 
be present. So true is this that an instrument has 
been invented by which the delicate displacement of 
the blood from one part of the brain to another, as 
the result of contemplating different thoughts and 
moods, is clearly revealed. Even in ordinary experi- 
ences this fact is disclosed. Why is it that the blood 
rushes to the cheeks when we blush; that fever sets 
in the breast when sad or distressful news is 
brought ; that the efferent nerves compel the muscles 
of the arm to move and grasp an object; that in- 
deed every volition of the will is revealed at once in 
physical performance? Manifestly, back of each 

[55] 



The Mastery of Mind. 



physical effect a thought had been exercised; and 
the exercise of that thought revealed itself in a spe- 
cific sort of phj^sical work. Hence, it is evident, that 
Thought is a force. It is as distinctly a force as 
chemical affinity, sound, or electricity. We are able 
to detect any force only by the work it does. There 
is no physical work without a motory force. 
Wherever there is work there is the evidence of 
force; wherever a force exists it reveals itself in 
work. Hence, when we see the work of an organ of 
the body, of a cell or fibre of the brain, of a nerve 
agitated by a neural current, we know that a force 
must be in operation. 

We also know that we can easily detect the differ- 
ence between the working of a force caused by the 
action of the mind, that is, by a thought, and that 
caused by any of the other forces of the world. For 
instance, when metabolic action sets in, that is the 
chemical consumption of the nerve force resulting in 
the destruction of the cells of the body, releasing the 
energy that is to result in other cell-formations, we 
speak of the force as physical or chemical. But when 
we witness the neural discharge that results from a 
mental agitation, either in the form of emotion or 
pure thought, we distinguish the force that causes 
the discharge as psychic or mental. The thought 
force may either precede or act simultaneously with 

[56] 



The Soul. 



the chemical force, but there is no difficulty in dis- 
tinguishing them as distinct and separate forces. 
(We are not at the present time contemplating the 
l)hilosophical unity of all forces, hence we speak of 
forces as separate and distinct.) All the leading 
psychologists and scientists are now agreed that 
what we may call mind-force (thought) is easily dis- 
tinguished from other phases of nervous energy. 
(See Wilhelm Ostwald's ^'Natural Philosophy/' 
Ernst Haeckel's "Wonders of Life," etc.) 

Mind, then, is the effect of the operation of certain 
forces upon the human organism that results in some 
form of consciousness. Soul is an impersonal force. 
Mind is the effect of this force expressed in terms of 
personal consciousness. Soul is always impersonal. 
Mind is always personal. " Mind is that part of the 
life of the soul which is connected with thought and 
consciousness, and, is, therefore, only found in the 
higher animals which have intelligence and reason," 
says Haeckel. 

We may contemplate the soul as the atmosphere 
that envelopes the earth. In this atmosphere there 
exists in solution all the chemical elements which 
ultimately associate to constitute this visible and 
compact globe. When the earth was still in a gase- 
ous state, ages before it cooled and crystallized in its 
present form, the same elements, that now disport 

[57] 



The Mastery of Mind. 



themselves in specific forms of matter and in organic 
bodies, floated through the gaseous sphere. The 
earth, when finally evolved, consisted of nothing 
more than the aggregation of these elements in com- 
pact relation. So is it with the soul and mind of 
man. The mind consists of nothing that did not 
always exist in the soul. The soul, primarily, was 
nothing but the chaotic association of the multitudi- 
nous thoughts, ideas, and notions of mankind floating 
in a vapory and unstable state around an individual. 
The work of the soul is to develop the individual. 
But the individual develops only as the soul passes 
from its primary, impersonal, cosmic nature into 
personal, compact, individual consciousness. 

The conscious mind is begotten by the unconscious 
soul. Man becomes himself as he is able to distin- 
guish his own soul from the world-soul. In other 
words, just in proportion to a man's ability to sepa- 
rate his self-consciousness from the vague state of 
existence, observed especially in the lower animals, 
and recognized as mere automatic response to en- 
vironment, does he pass from impersonal soul-life to 
conscious mental life. 

Therefore the career and character of each indi- 
vidual will be complexioned by so much of the soul- 
life as he permits to penetrate his mind or conscious 
life. The mind, slowly developed from the soul, be- 

[58] 



The Soul. 



comes itself the master of its own fate by determin- 
ing the quality of the soul-force which it desires to 
acquire. We may better comprehend this idea of the 
soul and its bearing upon the mind-life of the indi- 
vidual, if we contemplate the work of an inventor. 
At some period in his life he realizes that something 
is seeking admission into his consciousness which at 
first he cannot fully understand. It is an idea so 
vague, vapory, and impalpable, that it distresses 
him. Ere long his mind is agitated and his heart 
agonized. He feels the idea growing slowly into 
consciousness, yet he cannot fully compass it. Sud- 
denly it takes form ; it stands out clearly as a statue 
before his mental eye; he is then thrilled and over- 
powered by it and produces the material copy of 
what he saw with such spiritual clarity. 

The soul is the residence of the myriad ideas, no- 
tions, feelings, desires, that have exercised the minds 
and hearts of mankind from time immemorial. The 
soul is the seat of all the mental forces that ever were 
in this or any other world, w^ith w^hich this one may 
be psychically connected. 

That we may reduce this study to practical use we 
shall attempt to classify, as far as possible, the vari- 
ous ideas and influences that play their parts in the 
soul-life and seek to merge with the mind-life of 
every individual. 

[59] 



The Mastery of Mind. 



CLASSIFICATION OF SOUL FORCES. 

Such a classification must necessarily be imperfect 
and crude. Yet it may have a suggestive value in 
education that will prove profitable. If it is studied 
carefully, and if each term in the classification of op- 
posing qualities be thoroughly apprehended and con- 
strued into a clear idea by the discerning mind, the 
exercise will prove valuable, and that not only for 
purposes of mental discipline, but in character-build- 
ing as well. I am here introducing the classification 
merely to show the subtle realm of influences which 
surround the mind and which, for good or ill, affect 
the lives of each of us. 

The first division will represent those forces which 
in the form of ideas emanate especially from our 
contact with the physical world, but merge in the 
moral forces that mould our characters : — 

PHYSICO-MORAL FORCES. 

FEAR. HOPE. 

COWARDICE. COURAGE. 

ANGER. PEACE. 

PAIN. JOY. 

HATRED. LOVE. 

ENMITY. FRIENDSHIP. 

QUARRELSOMENESS. AMATIVENESS. 

INJUSTICE. JUSTICE. 

CALLOUSNESS. TENDERNESS. 

HARSHNESS. MERCY. 

[60] 



The Soul. 



UNPITYINGNESS. PITIPULNESS, 

DISHONESTY. TRUTHFULNESS. 

TREACHERY. PROBITY. 

HAUGHTINESS. HUMILITY. 

WAYWARDNESS. SELF-CONTROL. 

SELFISHNESS. SYMPATHY. 

IMPUDENCE. RESPECTFULNESS. 

IRASCIBILITY. CALMNESS. 

MELANCHOLY. CHEERFULNESS. 

SECRETIVENESS. CANDOR. 

I have so arranged the terms that they may be ob- 
served as race-influences which bear upon each life as 
it is engendered on the earth. Each human being 
lives over again the entire life of the race, just as the 
embryonic form in gestation reproduces the image of 
each preceding physical phase of the animal world. 
Manifestly then the path of development is to ward 
off the baser influences, such as those enumerated in 
the left-hand column, and to encourage the free play 
of those influences indicated in the column on the 
right. As we proceed in these studies we shall pre- 
sent a plan whereby these influences may be con- 
jured and guided in the development of human char- 
acter. 

The next classification will enumerate those quali- 
ties which we may distinguish as more directly 
psychical than those just tabulated, yet which ema- 
nate almost wholly from the ethical effects in the 
human mind of influences that bear upon it. 
[61] 



The Mastery of Mixd. 



ETHICO-PSYCmCAL FORCES. 



DISCORD. 

IGjS'OEAXCE. 

SUPERSTITION. 

BIGOTRY. 

BONDAGE. 

CREDULITY. 

IMBECILITY. 

FOLLY. 

capriciousness. 

obstinacy. 

i:mpulsiveness. 

irreverence. 

■svrongness. 

BADNESS. 

DULLNESS. 

INDIVIDUALITY. 

ANTHROPOMORPHISiT. 

HUMANISM. 

INDRTDUALISM. 



HARMONY. 
KNOWLEDGE. 
RATIONALITY. 
TOLERANCE. 
FREEDOM. 
INCREDULITY. 
INTELLIGENCE. 
TVISDOM. 

perse^t:rance. 

reasonableness. 

orderliness. 

reverence, 

rightness. 

goodness. 

perspicacity. 

universality. 

pantheism. 

DEISM. 

FRATERNALISM. 



Thus is each human being whelmed in an ocean of 
invisible and subtle influences from which he must 
either make his escape, or to which, by staunchest 
allegiance, prove his loyalty. On the one hand, if 
he listlessly permits them to submerge him, he will 
be foundered in the tumultuous sea of life. On the 
other hand, if he command them, selecting those 
which shall be auspicious and rejecting those that 
accurse him, he will have seized the mystic powers 
that lie latent in his soul and invite him to the 
mastery. To attain^ we must struggle to draw into 

[62] 



The Mastery of Mind. 



our habitual consciousness such of these soul-influ- 
ences as shall tend to our ennoMement and highest 
development. They lie round about us like the 
overtures of awaiting angels. If we want them, we 
can by an effort of the will and persistent struggle 
possess them. We must shut our eyes to those ele- 
mental forces of evil that emanate from our animal 
ancestry and contemplate those only that enlighten, 
soften, and ennoble. But we shall make mistakes. 
Sometimes we shall draw to ourselves those baser 
psychic and ethical forces that make for undoing. 
The victory lies not in bewailing such missteps, for 
by doing so we but intensify the evil that besets us. 
Turn the mind away from the influence that deceived 
and defeated, and fix it fast and long upon the nobler 
and more edifying element which wisdom dictates 
that we should conjure. " Even as one heat another 
heat expels, or as one nail by strength drives out an- 
other, so all remembrance of a former love is by a 
newer object quite forgotten." 

If, at some period of life, circumstances drive to 
discord and disharmony, till all the chords of our 
being twang with distress, seek swiftly such occupa- 
tion as shall invite harmony to the mind and rest to 
the nerves. Why dwell on thoughts that make one 
miserable, knowing how they precipitate disease in 
the body and disaster in life? By force of habit con- 
[63] 



The Soul, 



jure such ideas as generate hopefulness and courage. 
Let occupation wait on appetite. Let what interests 
be the guide to what we do. 

Seek freedom. This comes by enabling the mind 
to expand its consciousness into the larger soul- 
influences that surround it. But in seeking freedom 
one must seek such freedom as shall make the life 
better and truer. By studying well the qualities 
specified in the left-hand columns above presented 
one may judge of the influences that tend to belittle 
and degrade the individual. By contemplating those 
on the right, one may revive the subtle powers whose 
presence uplifts and ennobles. Yet whatever may 
have been one's mistake in unfortunate mental asso- 
ciation with evil powers it behooves us never to de- 
spair, but once more to arise and buckling on the 
armor of the higher attributes set forth, like another 
Sir Galahad, in search for the Holy Grail. 



'* What thou hast done ; thou hast done: for the heavenly horses 

are swift ; 
Think not their flight to o'ertake ; — they stand at the throne 

even now ; 
Ere thou canst compass the thought, the immortals in just 

hands shall lift, 
Poise and weigh surely thy deed, and its weight shall be laid 

on thy brow ; 
For what thou hast done, thou hast done." 



[64] 



PART II. 

I. The Beain. 
II. The Nerves. 
III. The Body. 



CHAPTER y. 

€lf)e 25taitt* 

HE mind is the segment of the soul which 
is circumscribed by consciousness. The 
circumference of consciousness includes 
as well the subliminal, or the subject- 
ive, as the actual or surface consciousness. The 
mind or the plane of thought is both conscious 
and unconscious. The brain is the instrument of the 
mind; therefore the brain possesses the machinery 
that registers the impressions of both conscious and 
unconscious mental activity. There is never an ac- 
tivity of the mind, whether the subject is aware or 
unaware of its exercise, but makes a physical impres- 
sion on the nervous system or the brain. There is 
never a sensation, whether perceived or unperceived, 
which does not produce its reflex response in the 
mind, either conscious or unconscious. Mind and 
body are mutually responsive, and each reflects the 
passing status of the other. 

If Nature had not developed in man the marvel- 
[67] 



The Physical Instruments. 



lous machinery of his complex brain and nervous 
system, he would not be possessed of the high intel- 
lect he enjoys. There is no such thing as a thought 
without a brain. There may indeed be forces in 
Nature, which are logically related, and which inter- 
act with responsive intelligence, but such forces be- 
come what we know as thought only when they oper- 
ate through the organ of a brain. 

This we see clearly demonstrated in the animal 
world. Just in proportion to the higher and more 
complex development of the brain, in the different 
orders of the animal kingdom, are we able to trace 
higher phases of intelligent activity. The size of the 
brain, or even its weight, has nothing to do with its 
acting as the instrumentality of intelligence.* The 

* The average weight of the human brain is from forty to fifty 
ounces. The brains of females weigh five ounces less, on the 
average, than those of males. But the ratio of the brain-weight 
to that of the body is the same in both sexes ; consequently, the 
difference of weight in the brains of males and females is due to 
the lesser body -weight in the woman, and not to inferior cerebral 
development. Thackeray and Cuvier had brains weighing fifty- 
four and fifty-eight ounces, or less than the average boy of seven 
years. Byron's brain weighed sixty-eight ounces, and Dante's 
fifty. Simms found an idiot boy with a brain weighing fifty- 
nine ounces, and an ignorant laborer whose brain weighed seventy- 
eight ounces. This would seem to prove absolutely that the 
weight of the brain is no guide to the intelligence of the indi- 
vidual. 

Simms in " Physiognomy Illustrated " (p. 82) presents a hand- 
[68] 



The Brain. 



elephant has a big brain, it is true, because it has a 
big body, and is very intelligent. But the ant is also 
intelligent, and yet has a very small brain, a mere 
dot — because it has a small body. More depends 
upon the fineness and complexity of the brain-tissues 
than upon its massiveness. But this fineness is the 
result of ages and ages of development. That is, as 
the brain substance was more and more impressed 
with varied experiences it developed into a finer and 
more tenuous element. Thus when the brain sub- 
stance of a highly sensitive man or woman is ex- 
amined it is found to be of the most delicate and sub- 
limate consistency. The grey matter of the brain is 
supposed to be the physical seat of intelligence. It 
constitutes the physical area of consciousness. That 
is, Nature has so built the brain that while many of 
its myriad cells are set apart for the reception of 
sensations and other impressions, only a few thou- 
sand of them are reserved as the instrumentalities of 
intelligence. The numerous functions of the brain 

some picture of an idiot, Charles Skinner, whom he describes as 
follows : "A congenital idiot, being neither epileptic, rickety nor 
hydrocephalic, yet he has the boldest, widest and highest fore- 
head the author ever saw on a human being, his head immedi- 
ately above the eyebrows and the tops of the ears has the enor- 
mous horizontal circumference of twenty-six and one-half inches. 
This idiot possesses more than Goldsmith's "garnish of brains if 
we judge by the size of his head." 
[69] 



The Physical Instruments. 



are localized. The especial areas set apart for sen- 
sation, sight, hearing, smelling, motion, etc, are all 
mapped out in the grey matter of the brain. Destroy 
one of these areas, and at once the physical capacity 
which it controls is paralyzed. If, for instance, the 
cells which must always be called into action when 
speech is invoked are stunned or destroyed, the capa- 
city for speech ceases and the man becomes dumb. 
Nor, indeed, does the work of depletion have to go so 
far as the final destruction of the required functional 
cells before the effect is perceived. A weak condi- 
tion of the cells is speedily revealed in the weaker 
functioning of the faculty. If, for instance, there is 
not a sufficient supply of blood to all the areas of the 
brain that superintend the office of sight, hearing, 
etc., the organs will soon reflect the condition in 
weakened vision, approaching deafness, and propor- 
tionate inactivity elsewhere. Fainting or a* loss of 
consciousness is the result of the temporary suspen- 
sion of circulation. If a portion of the skull is re- 
moved and pressure is brought upon the brain, total 
consciousness for the time being is destroyed. If the 
grey matter of the brain is inflamed, delirium ensues. 
If there is a too large flow of blood to the brain, 
stupor and apoplexy follow. The white fibres that 
radiate from the brain cells are the avenues for the 
expression of the will and, if affected, evidence the 

[70] 



The BnAiN. 



fact in a parallel physical result. Too much blood 
flowing into them produce a torpor in the muscles 
and a decline of the will-power. 

THE BUILDING OF THE BRAIN BY MENTAL 
ACTION. 

In fact, the whole atmosphere of life, as we see it 
through the windows of the soul, is colored by the 
physical condition of the tiny cells of the brain that 
act like so many million batteries generating or with- 
drawing our intellectual activities. We are op- 
timistic or pessimistic too often proportionately 
with the rhythmical or irregular flow of the cir- 
culating medium. Our energy, our hopes, ambi- 
tions, are often but the issue of the free flow of 
fresh, red, well-oxygenized blood through the 
avenues of life. When the entire system is well- 
poised and every part of the body tingles with 
the electric thrill of cellular activity, life looks so 
good, and true, and promising to us. But when we 
feel the sad and depleting depression of the mind 
that makes the world look like a gloomy prison and 
the future black with ill-foreboding, we too often for- 
get that what we see is but a spiritual reflection of 
our physical state. Better air, more nutritious food, 
change of occupation, and mental activity, rapidly 

[71] 



The Physical Instruments. 



alter the moods of our spiritual skies. Heaven and 
hell, indeed^ are within us^ in a physical sense as well 
as spiritual. 

Not only are our spiritual and mental conditions 
frequently the issue of our bodily status, but the 
awakening of so-called psychical forces is also much 
dependent on it. Visions, the apparitions of mo- 
mentary reverie, the floating phantasms of the mind 
that so often affright the ignorant, may sometimes be 
traced to the quantity of blood in the brain. Who 
has not seen tragic scenes in dreams o' night that 
cause his eyes to start from their sockets and each 
individual hair to stand on end? Yet how frequently 
do such tragical dream-dramas prosaically originate 
in the indigestible piecrust with which we retired. 
I remember once dreaming of seeing my own father 
rushing towards me, and before I could cry for 
rescue plunge his long bony fingers into my chest 
and angrily draw forth my dangling and bleeding 
heart, which he flaunted before my eyes with his 
blood-clotted hand. I had eaten a very hearty meal 
and fallen suddenly asleep upon a couch before bed- 
time. 

Who has not been harassed by waking visitors of 
the brain in early morn, that come from some airy 
world, all wrapt in mystery? At one time in my 
life I was annoyed for many months by strange, af- 

[72] 



The Bkain. 



frighting psychic forms, which hovered round me as 
I awoke in the morning. If I closed my eyes, they 
became so vivid that I was startled from my bed and 
arose earlier than I desired. I noticed finally that 
they always came when I lay upon my back; if I 
turned on my side they instantly vanished. What 
mystic power did my lateral attitude possess that it 
should exorcise the monsters which waited on my 
supine lucubrations? " Blood, lago, blood '' ! It was 
indeed, merely, a matter of blood, and the channel it 
sought in the different avenues of my brain. 

There is one remarkable fact that has recently 
been learned. The brain, as it now exists in the 
body of a highly developed man, was of slow progress 
and reached its culmination only through ages of 
growth. But while it was ascending to this supreme 
stage of unfoldment it paused on the road of its 
progress in temporary stages that long prevailed. 
The fact that man, virtually, has three brains, the 
top brain, the middle brain, and the back brain, is 
highly significant. The back brain, the brain of the 
medulla, we learn, is the organ of the sensations. 
The top brain is the organ of the intellect or the 
mind proper. But the middle brain, the brain as yet 
the least explored, seems to be the seat of involuntary 
or unconscious action. 

We have inherited each of these brains from our 
[73] 



The Physical Instruments. 



animal ancestry. There was a time when the back 
brain was the highest brain development in certain 
forms of animals. Those animals could not do any 
thinking or reasoning. Their whole mental capacity 
lay in receiving external impressions. If we descend 
to still lower forms of life, the uni-cellular, we find 
that they did not yet have even a back brain ; but the 
whole organism was a brain, so to speak, which was 
not as yet divided up into specialized functions. 
Yet, in that primal cell there was already the com- 
plete prophecy or forestallment of the entire future 
history of brain development. When the single- 
celled animal began to unite with other single celled 
animals, organized brain began its existence. It 
travelled on in the course of its age-development, 
gradually building nerves, or numerous thin strings 
of fibre which radiated throughout the system. 

Then those strings became twisted into knots at 
certain sections of the system, making ganglia — the 
primitive brain-centres. These ganglia became the 
mechanical organs which carried out the brain func- 
tions. They operated in the work of gathering and 
assimilating food, of responding to or withdrawing 
from external influences, of breathing, moving the 
muscles, operating the digestive organs, etc. These 
separate ganglionic brains scattered through the 
body, and at first acting independently, gradually 

[74] 



The Bkain. 



came into communication, and together built up a 
central organ from which they could receive their 
commands and to which they could communicate 
their wants. When the history of the brain had 
reached this stage it paused for a long time, for 
the spinal cord and the medulla brain were thus 
built up. This was all the brain that certain animals 
needed for countless ages. They did not require 
thought, either as forethought or hind-thought, their 
wants did not call for extraordinary caution or selec- 
tion. They were safe in following the instantaneous 
signal of the danger call, and by reflex response filled 
all the requirements of their natures. The skulls of 
all such animals are very flat and often long, for 
they require but a small room for the enclosure of 
the brain they possess. The top brain had not yet 
been built. Their brain, or what they have of 
one, is longitudinal, like their bodies. But gradu- 
ally as th-e body rises from the earth, ascending from 
the reptilian to the quadrupedal and duopedal forms, 
the frontal or high brain begins to take on shape, 
and the skull is accordingly carved with a higher 
crown. Not until the brain becomes more perpen- 
dicular, and at last in man and the higher animals, 
demands a high-browed skull for its residence, do 
conscious intelligence and will force come into ex- 
pression. But at last when the high brow and the 

[75] 



The Physical Instruments. 



frontal brain are formed, they do not abrogate the 
lower brains, which have descended to man from his 
inferior ancestry, nor are their functions nullified. 

The back brain remains as the seat of the sensa- 
tions, and the middle brain as the seat of the un- 
conscious action of the mind. Here we enter on a 
marvellous stage of brain development that bears 
closely on the moral history of the race. If it is true, 
as now all physiologists admit, that every impression 
of the mind leaves an indelible registry of itself on 
the cells and fibres of the brain and nervous system, 
then, as our bodies and brains have descended to us 
from the far past, they must retain the myriad im- 
pressions of a world of beings which have long since 
passed into oblivion. Within this back brain, then 
we possess the invisible remains of age-forgotten 
physical and mental conditions, which in some vague 
way subtly affect our daily lives. Here are the relics 
of the warring passions, the lusts and cravings, that 
once welled in the breasts of beasts and savages. 
Here are the impulses and appetites that mechani- 
cally acted upon the wills of prowling hyenas and 
stately lions in some far-off, forgotten jungle, that 
stir again within our flesh, to be obeyed or conquered 
as the character is colored. When anger, and the 
gnashing of teeth and the clawing of flesh possess us 
in a momentary frenzy, we have suddenly permitted 

P6] 



The Braiis^. 



atavistic tendencies to seize us, which have long lain 
latent in the fibres of the medullary brain. 

Were we still animals, possessed of only this brain, 
we would without compunction yield to the impulse 
of the warring passions. But as a higher brain has 
been evolved in us, our heritage from the ages, we 
suddenly lift ourselves into the realm of the higher 
consciousness it grants us, and, looking down upon 
the undesirable actions of the lower brain, regret 
our weakness and condemn ourselves for our dis- 
graceful fall. We are thus able to rise superior to 
the animal impulses because we have a more highly 
organized and sensitive brain that affords a channel 
for the expression of loftier impulses and ideals. 

But we must remember that the brain itself acts 
in response to conscious commands only when it has 
been so well developed that it is susceptible to the 
impressions of the will. If by long usage, by judi- 
cious education, we have not cultivated the habit of 
the higher brain to respond to the nobler impulse, 
then the reflex tendency of the lower brain will seize 
us unawares and bring us to shame. Indeed, this 
is precisely what is constantly occurring in our lives. 
We fail in our pursuit of happiness and self-esteem 
because we have as yet so little educated the im- 
pulses of the upper brain to respond to the demands 
of our higher ideals that the latent reflex tendencies 

[77] 



The Physical Instruments. 



of the baser brain master us ere we are aware. The 
lower brain is a tremendous force for evil, a giganti- 
cally charged battery of dangerous impulses, because 
it is nothing less than the storage of the habits that 
once prevailed in the lower orders of the animal 
world. They seize us through our instincts and me- 
chanical impulses, and we can save ourselves only by 
the most attentive and persistent education. But the 
education must be that of the will, as the chief 
functional agent of the mind. The will may be de- 
fined as the culmination of desire. When the desire 
is sufficiently powerful to compel a discharge of 
nerve force that establishes the physical or mental 
state demanded, the will has asserted itself. If then 
the Ideal be set before the mind, and the demand be 
made and importunately proclaimed, ere long the 
desire will have developed into a volition, and the 
brain will respond to the conscious will. 

What we desire, therefore, that is good and true, 
virtuous and pure, noble and uplifting, becomes our 
Ideal. This constitutes a magnet, which by long 
contemplation draws us toward it. At last it trans- 
mutes the desire into a mental action that compels 
its own realization. 

" Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things 
are reverential, whatsoever things are just, whatso- 
ever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, 

[78] 



The BnAiif. 



whatsoever things are of good report ; if there be any 
virtue, if there be any praise, THINK ON THESE 
THINGS ! " Here Paul lays down no less a true law 
of psychology than one applicable to the religious 
life. To dwell upon the thought is to awaken the 
desire; to arouse the desire is to compel the will; 
to compel the will is to convert the thought into an 
Ideal and become the joyful subject of its power. 

There is, however, a hidden and long-overlooked 
brain-centre which plays a most important part in 
every human life. I have called it the middle brain : 
the seat of unconscious cerebration or mental action. 

Nature has so happily constructed the mechanism 
of the human body that it is especially adapted to the 
usages of the mental forces. It called for the labor 
of countless ages ere this " fearfully and wonder- 
fully made" organism reached its ideal completion. 
But, when finished, it was as adequately and per- 
fectly adapted to the operations of the human mind, 
in all its marvellous capacities, as could possibly be 
conceived. As man first receives his impressions 
from the outer world, and all his fund of knowledge 
is dependent on the access of phenomena through the 
five gateways of the senses, we have seen how through 
the lower brain these impressions enter into human 
consciousness. They travel up the various avenues 
of the specialized nerves, pass the ganglionic centres 

[79] 



The Physical Instruments. 



and pause at the base of the brain, thus controlling 
the motor and sensitive centres of brain-activity. 
Passing beyond these primitive centres, the vibra- 
tion, if continued, reaches the higher group of brain 
cells that constitute the upper or cortical layers, 
and institute that state of mental activity which we 
call consciousness. It was the mind's struggle to 
reach what might be called self-realization that 
gradually constructed, through countless centuries, 
these upper and more complex cell-groups which 
made possible the state of mind we call self-con- 
sciousness. Were not the cell-organisms so con- 
structed that by their peculiar grouping the effect of 
consciousness could be produced, we would be but 
automata, moved by external forces, yet intellectu- 
ally unresponsive to their influence. We shall a 
little later enter more specifically into the actions of 
the higher mind through the processes of the upper 
brain. 

now THE BRAIN PHOTOGRAPHS THE MIND. 

But first we must emphasize an important truth. 
We have observed that every mental action leaves an 
inerasable impression upon the brain substance. 
Each stir of a muscle, each impulse of the will, each 
craving of a passion, each yearning of an emotion, 

[80] 



The Beaii^. 



each pictorial impression of an imagination, each 
abstract reflection of philosophical reasoning, leaves 
somewhere in the nervous and brain structures of 
the body indestructible residua, which abide as latent 
forces of the soul. These might be called the spectra 
of temporary and flitting sensations, emotions, 
thoughts, and reflections of the mind's constant 
activity. They are the momentary visitations of the 
soul, w^hich come suddenly and seem as suddenly to 
depart forever, yet leave behind their spectral forms 
to be conjured when occasion calls. But though I 
refer to them as spectral forms, I do not mean that 
they shall be regarded as spiritual substances be- 
yond the reach of the flesh. They are indeed fleshly 
spectres of flitting mental forms. They lie deeply 
buried in the secret recesses of myriad cells, subject 
to recall into conscious activity when the proper 
energy musters them to action. " As the thought 
passes from consciousness, something remains in the 
cerebral substratum, call it what you will — trace, 
impression, residue. What the precise character of 
these residua may be, is perhaps questionable, but it 
is impossible to deny their existence in some form 
consistent with the cerebral structure and activity. 
All thoughts, feelings, and impressions, when disap- 
pearing from consciousness, leave behind them in the 
nerve substance, their effects or residua, and in this 

[81] 



The Physical Ii^^stetjments. 



state thej constitute what may be called latent or 
static mind." (Youmans' " Scientific Study of Hu- 
man Nature.") 

It is of this latent or static mind, which we now 
wish to speak. As the conscious dynamic mind has 
an especial organ in the brain through which to ex- 
press itself, namely, the cortical groups, so the latent 
or static mind has its especial organ. The organ of 
the conscious mind is the upper brain ; the organ of 
the latent or unconscious mind is the mid-brain. 
The secret of the acquirement of knowledge, of the 
unfoldment of character, of the pursuit and achieve- 
ment of success in life, depends in the end especially 
on the ability of the individual to bring this mid- 
brain into proper action when required. Memory, 
imagination, will, and reflection, all find their 
sources of energy in this secret or middle brain of 
man. What is memory? It is the recall to the mind 
of an objective experience now passed from con- 
sciousness. But what is the recall of the experience? 
It is merely the re-association in the brain of the 
same cell-groups that conformed for the presentation 
of the first experience. How shall those cell-groups 
be brought again into a similar association with 
what existed in the desired experience? That is, how 
shall the cells be so reorganized as to call back to 
the mind the thought or idea or name or scene that 

[82] 



The Beain. 



has been lost to consciousness. It cannot be done by 
will. No matter how much we determine to remem- 
ber, the elusive thing will escape us. All we can do 
is to surrender to the mercy of certain forces that 
prevail within us, to manipulate which is the real 
secret of successful living. 

Knowing that the association of cell-groups came 
by a process of mind-action, we must endeavor to 
trace over again the steps by which those cells were 
originally mustered into play. If we can do this, 
we can recall the name or the event. The entire dis- 
cipline of memory lies along this line. Like a thread 
thrust into a solution of salt, once the crystals begin 
to form about it soon the entire thread is covered. 
So once the thread of the desired memory can be 
thrust into the solution of the latent minds that re- 
side in the individual cells, one by one they will 
begin to cluster round it till at last the grouping 
will stand out as a single mental state we call mem- 
ory. 

So, mth imagination. We have here the most 
efficient faculty of the soul, which is not, as many 
suppose, merely a plaything of the mind, to be used 
for pleasurable purposes only. The imagination, the 
image-making soul-faculty, is really the creator of 
the mind, conjuring into being powers for good or 
ill. This capacity lies at the base of all systems of 

[83] 



The Physical Instruments. 



mental therapeutics. Once the mind can image forth 
to consciousness the state of physical equilibrium 
and health of mind and body desired, if vivid enough, 
the reflex bodily effects will ensue. This stands to 
reason. For the mind is the subtle force that gener- 
ates cell-activity and nervous discharge. How often 
do we burst out laughing to ourselves, when we but 
recall a previous comical or ludicrous experience! 
Why? Because for the moment the experience is as 
vivid to us as it was at the original occurrence. We 
forget that it is a past experience, and realize it for 
the moment as immediately present. Yet it is pres- 
ent only in the mind. Thus showing that the men- 
tal image formed in the silent self is the real 
dynamic force that dispels and musters the cell 
groupings that constitute the basis of our conscious- 
ness. To control this faculty then must at once be 
seen to be one of life's most important achievements. 
Likewise with the Will. As has already been said, 
the will is not a distinct organ or faculty, but a 
mental state ensuing on the strain of a desire or 
craving. But what is the desire? Physically, it is 
the tendency of certain cells to form distinctive 
groupings. Just as there is a chemical afiSnity in- 
herent in certain planetary elements, so there is a 
fixed aflSnity between the various cells of the body. 
When there is a disposition of these cells to group, 

[84] 



The Brain. 



either as the result of previous groupings or because 
of possible association, there comes to the conscious 
mind the state known as desire. When these cell 
affinities have become so polarized that they draw 
each other powerfully, the desire in the mind has 
developed into a volition. Then the cells rush to- 
gether and the will is expressed. 

The law that We must learn then is the control of 
the desires, and thus in the regulation of the will 
so to group or arrange the cells as to permit of only 
such volitions as shall be for our good. For in- 
stance : A young man is thrown among certain asso- 
ciates. He observes that they indulge certain habits 
whose moral value he questions. One of two things 
will follow. Either he will emphasize his first im- 
pression and thus pull himself away from what he 
believes to be temptation; or he will become lax in 
his convictions and gradually merge in their habits. 
If he believes the indulgence is vicious, he permits 
the entrance of a dynamic mental condition that 
draws together certain cells which associate to form 
the thought of opposition. If he persist, these cells 
will continue to be propitious, and will call on more 
kindred cells to add to their nervous energy and, if 
not interfered with, will in time become so strong 
that they will make a physical framework for the 
mental determination which shall prove his rescue. 

[86] 



The Physical Instruments. 



^' The activity of the vesicular neurine of the brain 
is the occasion of all these capabilities. The little 
cells are the agents of all that is called mind, of all 
our sensations, thoughts, and desires; and the 
growth and renovation of these cells are the most 
ultimate conditions of mind with which we are ac- 
quainted." (Dr. [Sir J. C] Bucknill.) 

But the point here to be emphasized is that the 
soul is continually leaving its inerasable impressions 
on these cell tissues, which in turn become the 
latent factors of mental energy. These factors of 
latent energy constitute the physical basis of the 
unconscious mind or the sub-self, which is the fun- 
damental basis of our character and life. These 
latent mental factors are resident in the middle 
brain. 

We shall see later how much this middle brain is 
depended on in the requirements of health and hap- 
piness. We shall see that we ourselves are respon- 
sible for the store of misery or joy, of optimism or 
melancholia, which we inherit from previously in- 
vited visitors of the air. 

The upper brain is controlled by conscious thought. 
The middle brain consists of the residua of the im- 
pressions left by the passing thought once resident in 
the consciousness. Thus the middle brain is the 
product of the upper brain. But only so in part. 

[86] 



The Brai:n^. 



For, as we are at present constituted, myriads of 
impressions leave their residual effects in the middle 
brain in which the upper brain has no part. The 
dynamic or active mind is the motor of the upper 
brain. The latent or static mind is the motor of the 
middle brain. As the middle brain results largely 
from the activities of the upper brain, so to a very 
large extent the static mind is subject to the con- 
trol of the dynamic mind. Hence, the conscious 
thoughts we entertain are themselves responsible 
for the sub-conscious forces that prevail. If the 
conscious mind undertake seriously to hold in its 
leash of power the activities of the latent mind, it 
may cause the subconscious or subliminal energies 
to respond to its commands and make for the good, 
the health, and the happiness of the individual. Of 
this we shall speak more in detail in a later chapter. 




[87] 



CHAPTEE VI. 



€f)e l^erbe^* 




T one time we thought the mind resided 
only in the brain. We still feel that we 
think in the head. If one pauses to ob- 
serve one's thinking one will see that 
the thought is directed at the fore brain. It 
seems as though we performed the act of think- 
ing there. In point of fact, the feeling agrees with 
the truth. For we do think in the fore brain. How- 
ever, this is only the higher form of intellectual 
activity. When we reason, will, imagine, reflect, we 
use the frontal brain. 

But there are various strata below that high layer 
of thought. These strata of mind-activity are exer- 
cised as we have seen on lower strata of nerve and 
brain cells. As all the nerves are in some manner 
connected with the thinking activity of the brain, it 
is not an exaggeration to say that there is no por- 
tion of the body in which mind does not exist in 
some form. 

[88] 



The Nerves. 



The nerves are spread so thickly and completely 
over the surface of the body that should the flesh 
be dissolved, and the nerves left intact, were such 
a thing possible, we would behold a transparent, 
viscous phosphorescent shape, modelled exactly like 
the body, yet far more refined and subtle. Had we 
the eyes to see, we would behold a thousand cur- 
rents of neural energy flying back and forth across 
this lace-work of tenuous matter, like vivid flashes 
of lightning. There would be no particle of this 
nerve-framework, however small, that would not vi- 
brate ceaselessly responsive to some stimulus. Noth- 
ing can enter the body that has not found the thread 
of Theseus which will guide it safely through this 
complex labyrinth. Like spectral sentinels, these 
tiny nerves stand guard over the temple of the body 
refusing admission or egress to any intruder or de- 
serter that cannot wend his way among the maze of 
fibres. These tiny guards watch the attempts of out- 
ward forces to invade the realm of the mortal frame. 
If these intruders cannot touch the chord that shall 
vibrate throughout the inner centres of the body, 
their attempt is futile. Should they smite the 
fibrous threads with a force pitched too high or too 
low, they cannot find an ingress, for this complex 
series of throbbing fibres is only sensitively respon- 



[89] 



The Physical Instruments. 



sive to a certain range of ether waves, amid the in- 
finity of waves that beat on the shores of eternity. 

A low, dull humming sound, will so affect the 
nervous threads that in time they will vibrate to the 
sluggish motion of the sound, and produce in the 
brain a sedative state which may result in stupor or 
sleep. And yet a sound identical in volume, but 
pitched far beneath, though duller, deader, and more 
sluggish would have no effect at all, because the 
fibres had not provided a gateway for its entrance. 
Likewise, a series of ether waves of such high fre- 
quency that they can awaken no response in the 
nervous avenues will merely pass over the body, 
leaving it unaffected. Thus electricity of a limited 
number of volts, but of high potentiality, will kill 
a human being; whereas an electrical current of 
infinitely greater voltage and of higher potential 
power will pass through it without meeting any 
opposition or arousing any friction. 

But it becomes apparent that the numerous series 
are in some way associated because they bear a 
general relation to the entire body. There is one su- 
preme centre at which all these systems converge 
and into which and from which they throw and with- 
draw their accumulated energy. This centre is in 
the brain, or the residence of the mental force. Thus 
we see that every form of energy which moves 

[90] 



The Nekves. 



out through the nerves from the brain or passes into 
the brain through the nerves is a phase of mental 
activity. The nerves are so distinctly and absolutely 
related to and cooperate with the activity of the 
mind, that they might be said to be distinctive 
mental instruments or avenues of mental action. If 
we had no nerves, we would have no capacity to 
exercise the mind. For the mere impression of 
mental force on the brain would be wholly ineffec- 
tive in its results if there were no nerves through 
which the brain might execute its mandates. Not 
a muscle is moved, not a fibre is contracted or re- 
laxed, not a drop of blood flows through the veins, 
not an iota of air is breathed into the lungs, not a 
crumb of bread is digested and converted into living 
fluid, not a single organ of the brain performs its 
distinctive function, unless it is goaded to its work 
by the discharge of neural energy upon it. 

We might almost say that the nerves are material- 
ized mental activity. True, they receive communi- 
cations from material sources, but, no sooner are 
they aware of the communication than they in- 
stantly inform the brain that the mind may be in- 
formed. Directly the mind is informed, the nerve 
responds to the mental command and executes its de- 
cision. There is absolutely no way for the mind to 
affect the coarser realms of the body except through 

[91] 



The Physical Instruments. 



the operation of the nervous system. The nerves are 
so much more delicate and tenuous than the ordi- 
nary material of the body that they respond with 
greater freedom and elasticity to the mental energy. 

HOW NERVE-SUBSTANCE RESPONDS TO 
THOUGHT FORCE. 

The nerve-substance approaches, more nearly than 
any of the muscles or bone substances of the body, 
the simplest or primary nature of life-substance or 
protoplasm. Nerve-substance itself seems not to be 
complex, as it used to be imagined. It is very sim- 
ple, and most easily affected by elemental conditions, 
such as temperature, moisture, concussion, etc. 

The high utility of the nerve-substance in the in- 
telligent processes of the body is made possible by 
the complex systematization of the nerve-radii. The 
substance of the nerves itself consists of phosphor- 
ized fats in a weak solution of salts ( Snyder) . While 
the general substance of the body consists of about 
70° or 75° of water, the nerve-substance consists of 
full 85°. This shows how much more easily the 
nerve-substance can be affected by heat, cold, atmos- 
phere, etc. Indeed, late discoveries have almost 
proved that the substance of the nerves is acted 
upon by varying degrees of temperature almost like 

[92] 



The Nekves. 



water. If the nerves are hot the substance dissolves 
or melts — that is, the fatty substance gets thinner by 
scattering more thoroughly through the watery ele- 
ment. It acquires more of the consistency of mo- 
lasses or jelly. But when the nerves grow cold, the 
water gradually freezes up, so to speak, and the 
nerve-substance hardens — that is, the fatty substance 
gathers together out of the solution and forms a 
more solid condition. 

So much has this been shown to be a fact that it 
is now known the nerves respond speedily to electri- 
cal charges with varying degrees according to the 
heated or chilled conditions. Apparently, when the 
nerve substance is heated, the fatty phosphorous 
elements are more scattered in the solution, and the 
electrical charge cannot affect the nerve so well as 
when the nerve substance is more chilled. Hence, 
when the nerves are heated or excited, they are less 
subject to electrical stimulation than when they are 
cold. Many very interesting experiments have been 
made along this line by some of the most prominent 
biologists of modern times. The work of Dr. Mat- 
thews and Professor Loeb is especially noteworthy. 

But we know that a mental action is electrical in 
its nature. Whatever else a thought or an effort of 
the will may be, we know that on its physical side 
it is simply an action or a mode of motion. We 

[93] 



The Physical Instruments. 



know that when we think, we set certain cells in 
operation. So well has this been proved that the 
localization of the specific set or group of cells that 
must be called into action for distinctive mental 
processes has been mapped out in the brain areas. 
When we see a raj of light, what happens? The 
vibrations of the disturbed ether strike against the 
retina of the eye and set up a responsive series of 
vibrations in the optical nerve, which, in turn, 
agitates a certain portion of the brain whose action 
results in what we call sight. 

This is proved bj the fact that when that special 
brain area which responds to the impulse of the opti- 
cal nerve is injured or destroyed, blindness ensues. 
On the contrary, if the retina and optical nerve are 
atrophied or injured, so that sight is impossible be- 
cause vibrations from without cannot affect them, 
it has been shown by laboratory experiments that if 
the cortical area which responds to the action of the 
optical nerve is electrically agitated a flash of light 
will be apparent even to a blind man. 

It is unnecessary to present further illustrations 
to the intelligent reader, but all the rest of the corti- 
cal areas are affected in like manner, such as those 
that have their functions in speech, hearing, smell, 
etc. Now all this goes to show that when the brain 
is affected by a nerve impulse it responds to some 

[94] 



The Nerves. 



physical activity or mode of motion. If, then, nerves 
are so affected by motion from without, and if their 
affections correspondingly set up certain motions in 
the brain, it must be apparent that whenever and 
however the nerves and brain are affected it is in 
accordance with the same law and method. There- 
fore, when the brain and nerves are affected in- 
wardly, or by thought, will, and reflection, the 
same physical process must be set in operation, with 
this difference only, that the impulse comes from 
within rather than from without. 

Now when we further discover that the nerves re- 
act most instantly, almost we might say automati- 
cally, to an electrical impulse from without, it is 
scarcely carrying the office of the imagination too 
far to assert that when they are affected by inward 
impulses those impulses must be electrical in na- 
ture. The effect of the mind, then, or the will, is 
in the nature of an electrical discharge. 

For a long time a materialistic philosophy claimed 
that all nerve action originated within the nerve 
cell — that it was a sort of spontaneous electrical 
battery, and that whatever effect its activity had on 
the muscles and the body in general sprung from its 
own spontaneous electrical activity. But this is 
now shown to be false. (See Schofield on " Uncon- 
scious Mind.") As remarks Dr. D. Hack Tuke, " The 

[95] 



The Physical Instkuments. 



Will determines, but the automatic apparatus exe- 
cutes." The Will, then, or the mental action, must 
be of the nature of an electrical disturbance. Its 
action correspondingly upon the nerves, and the law 
and method by which it can be induced, must be 
identical with the law and method of external elec- 
trical agitation. Let us then attempt an application 
of these principles^ 

We saw that the nerves, if in a heated or excited 
state, were less easily affected by an electrical im- 
pulse, because the fatty substances were so dissolved 
that the electrical energy somehow could not find 
it, to speak vulgarly. Is not this true of the mental 
energy? When a person is in an agitated, angry, 
hysterical or nervously disturbed condition, is it not 
next to impossible for such a person to receive a 
direct impulse from a mental action? Can such a 
person think, reason, or will? Are not the nervous 
tissues in such a condition that if one attempts to 
use them as agencies for rational action they become 
the more disturbed and fly all apart into scattered 
elements ? 

The physiological reason for this fact seems to be 
that the nerves are too hot, that is, they are too 
melted, to receive the electrical energy of the mental 
action, and hence the failure of any rational effort 
in their behalf. 

[96] 



The Nerves. 



RATIONAL TREATMENT OF THE INSANE 
AND HYSTERICAL. 

This fact shows how utterly nonsensical, yea 
criminal, the former treatment of the insane was. 
Indeed the lesson must still be enforced, for there are 
many who think that the insane can only be con- 
trolled by physical restraint and force. Undoubt- 
edly the reason they are not amenable to rational 
mental action is because their nerves are so heated 
or melted that any effort mentally to control them 
is physically impossible. This is also true of hysteri- 
cal and all kind of excitable people. Let the nerves 
get cooled down. The fact that there is a certain 
sort of smell, very vague and subtle, that accom- 
panies insane persons, which an expert, it is said, 
can detect, seems to indicate the fact that a peculiar 
sort of nerve-dissolution takes place in their bodies. 

Manifestly, then, the only scientific way to treat 
the insane is first to so affect them that their nerves 
will be calmed and cooled, and kept in such condi- 
tion, till the power of the reason and the kindly affec- 
tions can overmaster them. There occurred some- 
where in the west an incident which illustrates this 
law in a most interesting fashion. It was in the 
summer time. A woman sat upon the veranda of a 
G [97] 



The Physical Instruments. 



country house knitting some socks when she was 
suddenly approached by a raving and frenzied man 
who made incoherent demands upon her. Being a 
woman of calm and self-restrained nature, she fortu- 
nately was not frightened and did not fall in a faint. 
This same man had passed a neighboring house a 
short time before and had attracted the attention of 
its inmates by his wild ravings and strange manners. 
One of these inmates slowly followed him, with a 
gun, thinking that perhaps he might attempt to 
harm those whom he might meet unprotected. As 
this man drew near the first house mentioned he 
saw the madman accost the woman, and, surmising 
that her life was in danger, ran hurriedly to her 
with the gun. But the heroic woman motioned 
to him in the distance to drop the gun and not 
to approach. By that time she had succeeded in 
attracting the calm attention of the madman by 
her gentle, soothing, and friendly voice, to such 
an extent that he paused in his senseless howl- 
ing. She had so far mastered him, simply by her 
voice and gentle manner, that she induced him to 
come quietly through the gate and take a seat on 
the porch. Having thus calmed him, she enjoined 
him to eat some food, which he did without the 
usual suspicion of the insane. She then informed 
him that she thought it would be enjoyable to take a 

[98J 



The Nerves. 



little ride. He consented. The buggy was prepared 
and brought to the gate; quietly he suffered himself 
to be led by the woman, who had so mysteriously 
conquered him, into the carriage where he remained 
at her side till she drove him to the authorities 
where he was cared for. 

Thus by the simple use of a calm mind, a quieting 
manner, and a fearless spirit, the woman performed 
a wonderful scientific experiment with marked and 
extraordinary success. By her gentle manner, that 
is, b}^ the use of correct mental effort, she had caused 
the discharge of certain electrical impulses in his 
brain and nerve centres which hardened the nerve- 
substance so that it became susceptible to the mental 
currents. 

We learn from this simple law how foolish and 
needless, yea, how criminal, is worry or unnecessary 
mental agitation. It heats and dissolves the nerve- 
substance, making it unsusceptible to necessary elec- 
trical impulses, and thus destroys their value as 
mental instrumentalities. 

By this law, too, we discover the physical benefit 
attaching to the cultivation of a meditative state of 
mind, to calm contemplation and studious in- 
trospection. How instantly are the nerves affected 
by the cooling zephyrs of the morning, the vibrant, 
bristling winds of October, the hot, enervating airs 

[99] 



The Physical Instruments. 



of the summer solstice, or the frigid days of an arctic 
winter. But why may they not be as well affected by 
corresponding mental states? Have we not all the 
seasons and atmospheres, all the temperatures and 
humidities, within our mental spheres as well as in 
the outward physical world? Do we not often 
suffer the summer solstice of dissolving lassitude, 
when each mental effort floats away in an airy solu- 
tion of mental fascination? when to think is impos- 
sible, to work is a wearisome endeavor, to endeavor 
is but to drudge? Or, possibly, we are not innocent 
of such mental temperatures as are too heated for 
calm contemplation, for earnest effort, for sincere 
friendship. 

At such times we need a mental change of climate, 
as when we rush from one section of a country to 
another for more congenial seasons. 

To withdraw from the agitated surroundings of 
nervous excitement and nervous strain to the quiet 
retirement of one's own solitude, either in the 
crowded streets or in the private closet, is but to 
invite the operation of a natural law that cannot 
but conduce to peace, happiness, and physical 
rehabilitation. 

At such moments of quiet, we return to the infi- 
nite source of all power, and, permitting our nerves 
to be restored to a state of physical equilibrium, we 
[100] 



The Nerves. 



prepare them for the higher currents of mental 
energy that assure us the strength and happiness 
for which we yearn. 

EDUCATION OF THE NERVES AND ETHICAL 
CULTURE. 

Following the law which has been suggested in 
this chapter, we should be enabled to make some use- 
ful applications of it to our conditions of health and 
ethical development. As we have seen, when the 
nerves are in a state of excitement, that is, when 
overheated, they become poor conductors of elec- 
tricity. Mental action, as has been argued, is a 
species of electrical activity; therefore, when the 
nerves are in a state of excitement they can be but 
little affected by a rational mental effort, because 
they are poor conductors of the electrical discharge. 
Hence, what we desire to accomplish in the way of 
culture that shall result in the improvement of our 
mental attitudes, our moral habits, and our general 
characters, must be attempted in moments when the 
mind is freest from agitating excitement — when we 
can command the largest calmness and sense of 
sobriety. 

At such times, if we desire to rid ourselves of un- 
happy mental moods and moral habits, we should 
[101] 



The Physical Instruments. 



send over the wires of the nerves the mental impulses 
that will plow such an electrical path through the 
nerve substance as will invite the desired condition 
when occasion calls for it. As for instance, let us 
assume we wish to overcome a disposition to anger, 
whether inherited or acquired. Certainly if we at- 
tempt this control in the Tiioments of fiery excite- 
ment, while the electrical currents are running wild 
over the nerve wires, and instead of pursuing a 
direct path are shunted and flying off in all direc- 
tions, we shall be able to effect but poor results. 

But if we direct the desire at which we aim over 
the course of the nerves while the mind is composed 
and the nerve-substance is in the right state, that 
is, chilled and responsive to impressions, then the 
desire will build for itself a pathway through the 
nerves. By repetition of the expressed desire the 
path will deepen so that ultimately the thoughts 
01 emotions which we wish to express will spontane- 
ously rush through the new nerve-paths which we 
have made, and thus rescue us from the evil dispo- 
sition that formerly prevailed. 

Hence, when we have given way to anger, when we 
realize its conquest, we should attempt to overpower 
it by some such plan as this : — 

First let the mind dwell upon the shame and deg- 
radation of the angry outburst. Let it contemplate 
[102] 



The Njerves. 



all the injury its indulgence is apt to inflict on the 
individual life; how it estranges friends, and belit- 
tles one's capacities; how it often drives its victim 
to the execution of deeds which in sane moments 
would be most appalling. Having thus convinced 
itself of the enormity of the evil habit, let then the 
will exercise its prerogative by determining that 
never again shall the mind suffer its electrical cur- 
rents to flow in the old channels through which the 
angry impulse passed, but will build other and hap- 
pier pathways for its expression. This may be 
accomplished by the mind asserting the following 
thoughts with vigor and intense authority : " I send 
forth only calm and composed impulses through the 
nervous paths ; " " I am conscious only of a sense of 
perfect composure and restful peace ; " "I harbor 
only kindly feelings toward all my neighbors, friends, 
and acquaintances ; " " I can conceive of no circum- 
stance that would agitate me or cause my mental 
currents to become confused; I am ever calm, com- 
posed, kindly, gentle, loving and sweet in my 
thoughts and disposition ; '' ^' I am immovable by 
aught that anyone may say or think against me; 
nothing disturbs or angers me; for I am the very 
quintessence of peace and gentleness." 

Now this line of thinking, not merely momentary 
but intense and persistent, often indulged, will in 
[103] 



The Physical I^^struments. 



course of time plow a new series of paths through, 
the nerve centres which will ultimately evince their 
force in the renewed disposition of the individual, his 
rescue from the evil habit he has learned to deplore, 
and the restoration of his peace and happiness. 

The same principle may be effectively employed 
in the acquirement of any desired mental or ethical 
capacity. We need but recall that, according to the 
law, the mental expression is an electrical discharge, 
and that the nerves become the best conductors when 
freest from over-heating excitement, to learn how 
easily it may be applied. One, for instance, desires 
to make of oneself a good mathematician. If there 
were not already a preparatory state which Nature 
had provided for the cultivation of the capacity, 
there would, of course, be no desire awakened. 
Hence the existence of the desire intimates that 
Nature has already laid the foundation for its possi- 
ble cultivation and achievement. Therefore, the 
thoughts should dwell long and often on the ambi- 
tion; not only when engaged in its cultivation, but 
when the mind is less excited with its contempla- 
tion; in moments of retirement and reverie; ever 
should the thoughts return to the ambition con- 
ceived and nurse it into being and re-awakened 
confidence. 

Mental and ethical habits are acquired according 
[104] 



The Nerves. 



to the same law as physical or muscular habits. 
Exercise is the one constant necessity. The mind 
exercises itself in the disposition known as thought. 
The body exercises itself in the disposition known as 
work. The mind's working is thinking, the body's 
working is acting. Now when a baseball player de- 
sires to develop himself into a skillful performer, he 
achieves his ambition only by persistent application 
and practice. But he engages in two processes, one of 
which is apparent and the other concealed. He ex- 
ercises both the mental and the bodily work. Unless 
he persistently thinks on his ambition and on every 
available occasion puts his thoughts into action, by 
exercising the body in the manner necessary to 
achieve his end, he will never become a successful 
player. But if he do both of these things, he will 
ultimately become one. 

So when the mind desires to acquire a purely men- 
tal or emotional quality it must exercise itself in the 
consummation of its purpose precisely as the body 
must be exercised for the purpose of acquiring any 
desired skill. Any brain centre can be developed 
which we desire if but we apply ourselves. The 
stupidest men have become great scholars, scientists, 
thinkers, and world-leaders, by mere persistence and 
application. 

Demosthenes was ill-made by nature for an ora- 
[105] 



The Physical Instruments. 



tor. His brain centres were distorted, resulting in 
feeble capacity in the use of his tongue. But he 
determined to become an orator, and by the proper 
exercise of his vocal chords he succeeded in so chang- 
ing the quality and association of his brain-cells as 
to restore his power of unstammering speech and 
cause him to become one of the greatest orators 
among men. 

Mental exercise does not mean mental laziness. 
Mere thinking will not consummate ambition. 
Thought must be exercised as well in action of the 
body as in action of the mind. Forced blood-flow to 
brain centres, whether by external or internal elec- 
trical application, will not of itself build up the 
brain or increase its capacity. There is but one 
natural and effective way to draw the necessary 
blood to any organ of mind or body. That is by 
such efficient exercise of the organ as to compel such 
usage of the nerve cells as shall demand a constant 
new supply of food. Then by properly nourishing 
the body with what nutriment it requires, and with 
ample quantities of fresh air and pure water, the 
blood will rapidly flow to the centres that need it, 
and thus keep the physical basis of the mental 
organs in an efficient working condition. 



tioej 




CHAPTER VIL 

€f)c 25otip* 

OW much is the happiness, the peace, the 
misery, or the woe of life dependent on 
the crude instrument of the body! How 
little has man learned its control ! How 
still is it the master of his morals, his ambitions, 
and his prowess ! How often has it dragged him to 
the gutter and besmeared him with the mire of 
infamy and vice, making of him who is " a paragon 
of animals, — in apprehension, a god " — the veriest 
libel on his Maker! 

Yet man is conscious of his self-responsibility, be- 
cause he can by an effort of the mind separate his 
personality — his self-conscious integrity — from its 
immediate relationship with the form it inhabits. 
Man cannot physically remove himself from his 
house of clay; yet he can soar on mental wings so 
far above the miasmatic atmosphere in which too 
often it abides, that he can become conscious of the 
regnancy of his soul, and its absolute dominance of 
[107] 



The Physical Instkuments. 



the body. Because he has so often failed in this, he 
has fallen to the estate of the damned and bitten the 
dust in his disgrace. The control of the body — its 
appetites, passions, habits, predilections — this is the 
one supreme necessity of life and the mandate of 
ultimate success. For the want of it, the myriad go 
down to the hell of self-disappointment and suicidal 
despondency; and the few who win are yet but par- 
tial victors, for they have set the golden head of 
genius on the clayey trunk of a clown. 

Edgar Allan Poe wrote some of the most exalted 
and inspiring lines that ever leaped from the pen 
of man. He lived a genius among the gods. His lips 
were touched with coals of fire from the altars of 
true inspiration. Yet how unhappy the ill-control 
of that body, which dragged him to an inebriate's 
grave, if not to the verge of insanity ! 

Letting go the reins, by which he should have re- 
strained the appetites of his intense nature, Daniel 
Webster, a Jove among statesmen, sank from the 
high estate of a master-genius to a paltry politician, 
cajoled by cunning, and disappointed in his loftiest 
ambition. Even the great Charles (Charlemagne) 
the shadow of whose superlative pyowess hangs over 
all Europe even to this day, the founder of a dynasty, 
the maker of an empire, was unable to control the 
petty kingdom of his body and yielded to an indul- 
[108] 



The Body. 



gence that dragged him to the grave of a suicide. 
He became enamoured of a simple rustic maiden, 
whose mysterious charms so overpowered him that 
he could not disentangle himself from the entranc- 
ing network, but forgot his dignity, his throne, his 
family, his reputation, and lost himself in her em- 
braces. Even when she died, he caused her body 
to be carried round through the cities and followed 
it in dumb adoration, till, losing his mind, he 
sought an end of his life. 

Oscar Wilde and Byron are further illustrations 
of the strange want of physical control in minds of 
superlative capacity. True, such mental kings won 
a certain favor from the gods, in spite of their un- 
happy ill-control of self. How much, though, could 
they have left as a heritage of their genius to man- 
kind had they but restrained their physical ten- 
dencies and conserved their wasted strength for 
some still more masterful achievement! 

Yet where there is one genius who wastes his 
body, and thus debilitates his mental force, there 
are a million who do likewise who are endowed with 
but a mediocrity of talent. When they lose them- 
selves in their appetites and vicious physical dispo- 
sitions, they leave no other heritage to those who 
mourn them than a wail of despair and an unhappy 
memory. 

[109] 



The Mastery of Mind. 



To have a good, healthy, happy, well-endowed 
body, and well under the control of common sense 
and judicious restraint, is, then, one of the first 
requisites of a successful career. 

One need not, however, be discouraged if not 
rightfully dowered with physical strength and pro- 
portion. There have been disfigured men and 
women whose very natural misfortune has been the 
inspiration of their effort and achievement. Not 
the dwarf-like and repulsive figure of Pope could 
prevent him from pouring forth the wisdom of verse 
and prose, till the splendor of his mind's achieve- 
ment so far overshadowed the disfigurement of his 
frame that one forgot to observe it while marvelling 
at his genius. 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was not dowered 
with health, beauty, or a fund of physical force. 
All her years she lay upon her invalid bed, and, 
almost deserted by her body, caused her brilliant 
mind to display such starry glories in the firmament 
of literature that she conquered in spite of her ex- 
hausted body. Sometimes the very force of the mind 
itself is so effective that it prolongs a life of which 
Nature had prophesied but a short duration, with 
death already written in the cradle. Such was the 
secret of Samuel Johnson's long life of seventy 
years and more, although physicians and friends 
[110] 



The Body. 



had anticipated sudden death at any moment. Bos- 
well informs us : '^ His figure was large and well 
formed, and his countenance of the cast of an an- 
cient statue; yet his appearance was rendered 
strange and somewhat uncouth by convulsive cramps, 
by the scars of that distemper which it was im- 
agined the royal touch could cure. . . . He had the 
use of only one eye, yet so much does mind govern 
and even supply the deficiency of the organs that 
his visual perceptions were uncommonly quick and 
accurate. So morbid was his temperament that he 
never knew the natural joy of a free and vigorous 
use of his limbs : when he walked it was with a strug- 
gling gait like one in fetters; when he rode he had 
no command or direction of his horse, but was 
carried as if in a balloon. That with his constitu- 
tion and habits of life he should have lived seventy- 
five years is a proof that an inherent vivida vis is 
a powerful preservative of the human frame." 

But one fact stands out with startling and prepos- 
terous certitude. It is this : that the human race is 
ridiculously short-lived. In the animal world it 
cannot at all compare with the alligator, the ele- 
phant, or the tortoise. The latter may live hundreds 
of years. Elephants reach an age of a hundred and 
more, and the average life of many animals is far in 
excess of that of humankind. Ah! but one says; 

[111] 



The Physical Instruments. 



These lower forms live longer, first, because their 
structure is such as to permit of extended longevity, 
and, second, because its use is so far less wearing 
than is the use of the human frame. To the latter 
objection there may be much force; but its edge can 
be materially worn off by recalling the fact that it is 
the ill-use of the human frame that exhausts and 
destroys it rather than the mere use itself. A thing 
properly made wears off but little of its essential 
nature by judicious usage. This is true of all ma- 
chines, and it is still more true of the human 
machine. But to the first objection there is no force 
at all. 

The truth is, judged by the quality of vital ten- 
acity, physical proportion and adaptation to en- 
vironment, the physical frame of man is better 
dowered than most of the lower animals, and is in- 
deed constructed with an apparent design of endur- 
ing the wear and tear of life for at least a couple of 
centuries. Dr. Hamilton, who made a most cau- 
tious and serious study of longevity, assures us that 
man could easily live to be a couple of hundred years 
old if he used his body rightly. Indeed Metchnikoff, 
who leads the world's biologists to-day, feels quite 
certain that by a proper dietary there is no need for 
death to enter the human race at all, and that in 
time we shall learn to prolong our years on this 
[112] 



The Body. 



planet for centuries by merely understanding and 
appropriating the scientific laws of life. 

It behooves us, therefore, in studying the " Mas- 
tery of Mind," that we learn some of the simple 
principles which underlie the achievement of efficient 
health and the acquirement of a sufficient physical 
prowess for the battle of life. Let us, then, proceed 
to study the following physical pre-requisites : 

Regularity in Habits. 

Rest and Sleep. 

RpiYTHMic Breathing and Nerve Response. 

I. Regularity in Habits. Habit is one of the 
arcane laws of human life. It is both physical 
and psychical. In the physical realm it is accentu- 
ated by the characteristic energy of the nervous 
force that operates in all the activities of the body. 
As a current of electricity is sent over the operating 
wires to communicate intelligence to some distant 
point, so over the slender threads of the nervous 
systems of our body are discharged the neural cur- 
rents that cause them to throb with action and in- 
telligence. These neural discharges cut, so to speak, 
distinctive channels through the nervous tissues, and 
like a stream of water that will flow into the deepest 
H [113] 



The Physical Instruments. 



bed accessible, this discharge ever seeks the chan- 
nels that have been cut the deepest by continuous 
usage. Therefore, a mental or physical act first at- 
tempted is less easily accomplished, because the 
fluidic discharge of the nerves must plow through 
unaccustomed passages. When one first attempts to 
shave off a portion of deep-grained wood, the initial 
effort is always difficult. But when once the first 
slice is severed the knife moves easily and the grain 
yields like a conquered servant. So frequent and 
repeated attempts to perform an unaccustomed 
physical or mental bit of work becomes with each 
attempt easier and easier, because the passage 
through the nerve fluid has been deepened and 
widened and the flow of the discharge is, as a conse- 
quence, facile and favorable. 

This is the reason that, for instance, when one 
first attempts to play upon a musical instrument, as 
the piano or the violin, one finds it almost impossi- 
ble and is easily discouraged. But when the at- 
tempt is persisted in and the sense of discourage- 
ment is not submitted to, ultimately the fingers, 
through mental guidance, so completely master tjie 
instrument that the performance becomes mechani- 
cal and approaches perfection. 

This feat is accomplished because of the fact that 
the mental effort has been transferred from the con- 
[114] 



The Body. 



scious to the sub-conscious plane of activity. The 
first effort demands extraordinary attention and 
courage, because the mind is conscious of resistance : 
it feels the tug, the push, the urge, the tension of the 
effort. It must battle its way through the unfre- 
quented nervous region as the pathfinder must blaze 
through the thick and unpathed primitive forests. 
But once the path is cut and the road is paved how 
easy the access and travel. Thus we see there is an 
occult physical and psychic law at work in every 
mental effort we put forth. The physical occult law 
is that of the discharge of the electric fluid of the 
nerves through the neural substance upon which it 
must impress its presence. The psychical law is the 
substitution on the plane of activity of the uncon- 
scious for the conscious faculties. 

This teaches us the necessity of regularity in the 
habits we cultivate. For the unconscious mental 
plane is of the mechanical nature, subject wholly to 
the superintendence of the superlative self-conscious- 
ness, and receives its orders wholly from that source. 
But once the superlative consciousness relinquishes 
its authority and relegates all duty to the inferior 
consciousness, then the mechanical action sets in 
and the habit is established. 

If we desire that the body should attain its high- 
est capacity, we must endeavor to habituate it to 
[115] 



The Physical Instruments. 



perform its activities as far as possible always at the 
same periods of time and under the same mental 
environment. 

Our bodies become decrepit and worn out chiefly 
because of want of order and method. The confused 
mind creates the distempered body. A calm mind 
will always generate a harmonious and self-con- 
tained physical fram«. 

One well acquainted with this law would be able 
to read almost any character from the apartment it 
occupies, from its physical surroundings and visible 
temperamental conditions. Tidiness of body is one 
of the first requisites of health and success. A clean 
and neat body is a profitable medium of exchange. 
Poor old Oliver Goldsmith found the trick of this 
truth and proved it very available. Always a pauper 
and finding it compulsory to depend for his stipends 
on the good-will of his friends, he learned early in 
life that favors are often granted commensurately 
with the appearance of the seeker. Hence, when he 
determined to call on a wealthy neighbor for a loan, 
he invariably borrowed a coat of fine velvet, clean 
shirt ruffles, and neat, new slippers with gold 
buckles, from some accommodating friend. For, 
he said, one is ashamed peradventure to refuse ac- 
commodation to a prosperous man, though a beggar 
is easily disposed of. 

[116] 



The Body. 



Money makes money, riches are contagious, and 
so are happiness, health, hope, and good cheer. 
Therefore the grumbler is always unwelcome though 
rich as Croesus, while the wit, with his volatile hon 
mots, is always sought for and favored. But all 
these qualities are only acquired by the institution 
of established habits of the body which generate 
them. 

If economy be desired in the achievements of the 
body, then regularity is of the utmost importance. 
By reason of the occult laws above indicated it is 
evident that if one wishes to do one's very best one 
should always attempt the same kind of work at 
the same hours of the day. This law is especially 
important to students and mental workers. But it 
is no less true of^physical workers. So true is this 
law that sometimes the body will refuse to respond 
with its accustomed willingness if the time be inap- 
propriate. How often have we attempted a task at 
an unaccustomed time, and though the body is not 
fatigued yet the effort fails. While when the hour 
arrives in which we were in the habit of performing 
the desired work almost spontaneously the body 
yearns for it, and it is accomplished practically 
without conscious effort. 

This law is well exemplified in the achievements 
of workmen in factories where by the division of 

[117] 



The Physical Instruments. 



labor the highest utility of each worker is achieved 
by accustoming him to do but one thing and always 
at the same time. The result is that while unfortu- 
nately the human being is reduced to the mental 
condition of a mere machine, he is able to produce at 
least tenfold of what he could accomplish were his 
energies diverted to several kinds of work at vari- 
able periods of time. Says Adam Smith, " The divis- 
ion of labor, by reducing every man's business to 
some simple operation, and by making this oper- 
ation the sole employment of his life, necessarily in- 
creases very much the dexterity of the workman. 
A common smith, who, though accustomed to handle 
the hammer, has never been used to make nails, . . . 
will scarce, I am assured, be able to make above two 
or three hundred nails in a day, and those, too, very 
bad ones. A smith who has been accustomed to 
make nails, but whose sole or principal business has 
not been that of a nailer, can seldom with the utmost 
diligence make more than eight hundred or a thou- 
sand nails a day. I have seen several boys under 
twenty years of age, who have never exercised any 
other trade but that of making nails, who, when 
they exerted themselves, could make, each of them, 
upwards of two thousand three hundred nails in a 
day. . . . The rapidity with w^hich the operations of 
some of these manufacturers is performed exceeds 

[118] 



The Body. 



what the human hand could be supposed, by those 
who had never seen them, capable of acquiring" 
("Wealth of Nations"). 

If, then, we wish to make the body submissive to 
the demands of the will — if we wish to prepare it 
best for all the requisites of nature and of human 
life, let us educate it to periodic habits of occu- 
pation. 

By this practice we shall, indeed, discover that 
those great desiderata of human beings, Health, 
Happiness, and Success are largely matters of habit. 
If we accustom the body to awaken each morning 
with the conscious possession of these qualities, and 
not with the predisposition to complaint and mis- 
giving, we will have forged far ahead toward the 
earthly paradise we pursue. If we accustom our- 
selves to think of the body as decrepit, full of aches 
and pains, and on our lips is ever a groan of despair 
and in our hearts a pang of self-reproach, we shall 
reap what we sow and end our days in sackcloth and 
ashes. 

" Guard well the days that hurry by, 
Nor backward look with heavy sigh ; 
All wasted are the tears that fall, 
No ill-spent hour can they recall. 



March onward with a fearless mind. 

And leave the shadows far behind." 

[119] 



The Physical Instruments. 



II. Rest and Sleep. In this age of over-eager 
activity nothing seems to call for more serious con- 
sideration than the demands the physical system 
makes upon us for a sufficient period of rest for the 
recuperation of wasted forces. How little do we 
realize the expenditure of energy in the course of an 
ordinary day^s work ! Were it not for the ceaseless 
supply of food, drink and air, the body would 
speedily expire. True, the amount of food need not 
be so voluminous as commonly supposed. Yet, to 
deprive the body of some requisite fluid to stimulate 
and awaken the natural humors will soon bring on 
exhaustion; while to attempt to do without air, in 
a normal condition, even for but a brief period, 
speedily reduces the system to the verge of initial 
dissolution. 

It is well known that the tissues of the body are 
in a state of constant combustion. The blood is 
molten matter, heated into fiery solution, and de- 
mands the constant supply of fuel, as does the oven 
of an operating furnace. Respiration, or simple 
breathing, institutes a condition of combustion. The 
furnace in which this combustion takes place is the 
lungs. The substance that it consumes is the burnt 
sugar. The fumes that ascend from the furnace in 
the lungs are vapor and carbonic acid gas. (Cooke.) 
The real reason, therefore, that we require so much 

[120] 



The Body. 



food, air and drink is to generate the necessary 
amount of heat to maintain the activities of the 
working organs of the body. It is the heat that 
keeps the body a-going. Without heat the system is 
speedily paralyzed, especially in its motor centres. 
Each human being perhaps at some period of his life 
has proved this fact to himself, especially if he live 
in a cold climate and has been subjected to arctic 
conditions. It is for this reason we require so much 
more clothing in cold regions as well as more food. 
We need more heat in the body, and must procure it 
either by natural or artificial means. Death even is 
sometimes overcome by the rapid application of heat, 
even after all other methods of resuscitation have 
proved useless. Animals suddenly plunged in hot 
water the instant that death sets in have been suc- 
cessfully revived (Baker). 

Now in order to keep the requisite supply of food 
in the system imagine the immense amount of en- 
ergy that must be-,generated. But in order to gen- 
erate the requisite amount of heat an immense strain 
is made on the energy of the system. The amount of 
energy that an ordinary person is said to expend 
every day in the maintenance of his bodily temper- 
ature, in internal mechanical work, such as the 
movements of the organic muscles, the heart, the 
lungs, etc., and the external mechanical work, such 

[121] 



The Physical Instruments. 



as locomotion, exercise, etc., has been computed at 
about three thousand, four hundred foot-tons. 
Two-thirds of this amount of mechanical energy is 
required to supply the body's heat; the rest is used 
in the organic and mechanical work performed. 

That we may have some idea of what this means 
imagine the amount of heat it would require, say, to 
raise about fifty pounds of water from the freezing 
io the boiling point. Any housekeeper will immedi- 
ately appreciate this comparison when she recalls 
how much wood or coal it takes to kindle a fire 
sufiiciently hot to cause even a small kettle of water 
taken from the well or water pipes to reach the 
point of boiling. How often has her patience been 
tried by the constant re-supply of fuel and the long 
time consumed in awaiting the result. A small 
kettle of water contains possibly about, say, four 
or five pounds of the fluid. If this water were first 
congealed and then the attempt made to boil it, it 
would require about one-half more heat than when 
the water is merely chilled. Now imagine ten 
times that amount of water, frozen and brought to 
boiling point, and you may have some idea of what 
is meant by the amount of heat we must produce in 
our bodies to keep up the work for a single day. 

But a still more vivid illustration of the amount 
of energy we daily consume is found in the state- 

[122] 



The Body. 



ment that if we turned that energy into the mechani- 
cal act of lifting a man up through the air, we 
would find, if he weighed about one hundred and 
fifty pounds, that he would be hoist up through 
eight and one-half miles toward the sun. Think 
what an effort it costs an ordinary man to attempt 
to lift a weight of one hundred pounds over his 
head. Imagine, then, this man being lifted over 
eight miles vertically into the air and conceive of 
the immense energy demanded. Yet that precise 
amount of energy we expend during an ordinary 
day's occupations. 

Hence, what can be more necessary than a suffici- 
ency of sleep and rest to permit the hard-worked and 
over-strained body to recoup its forces! The secret 
of the rapid increase of nervous exhaustion and 
neurasthenia in the present age is that people will 
not rest long enough to give Nature a chance to 
catch up with them. Their pace is faster than the 
flight of Mercury, the messenger of the gods. Even 
he would fail to keep up with a fast-striding modern 
American. He works all the day long with the ex- 
citement of a fire-horse rushing to a conflagration, 
and occupies the night to dream out in restless half- 
sleep the problems he cannot find time to solve in 
the daylight's busy moments. Then he awakes to 
hail the early sun, stretching, yawning, groaning, 

[123] 



The Physical Instruments. 



aching, and begins again the deadly grind. Still he 
wonders why he suffers from headaches and why the 
world looks so gloomy and foreboding. 

Realizing this unhappy condition of our age, we 
must thoroughly sympathize with Hawthorne when 
he exclaims, in " Mosses from an Old Manse " : " Were 
I to to adopt a pet idea, as so many people do, and 
fondle it in my embraces to the exclusion of all 
others, it would be that the great want which man- 
kind labors under at this present period is sleep. 
The world should recline its vast head on the first 
convenient pillow and take an age-long nap. It has 
gone distracted through a morbid activity, and, 
while preternaturally wide-awake, is nevertheless 
tormented by visions that seem real to it now, but 
would assume their true aspect and character were 
all things set right by an interval of sound repose." 

If Hawthorne was so impressed in the last cen- 
tury what would be his attitude now? He lived 
long before the days of the electrical telegraph, the 
trolley cars, underground electrical tramways, twen- 
tieth century trains, and the everlasting honk, honk 
of the affrighting automobile! Yet even in his age 
of comparative composure he cried for sleep. But 
how much more does the present age require it. 
While, indeed, we need not hope that the entire race 
will heed the demand of Nature, we may hope that 

[124] 



The Body. 



the few who are wise will do so, and seek the shelter 
of some calm repose. 

It is interesting to learn that there is a physio- 
logical law underlying the utility of sleep and rest 
which proves to us how necessary they are. " When 
we fall asleep the eyelids are lowered over the eye- 
balls which turn upward, and the voluntary muscles 
are relaxed, so that the whole body, and especially 
the face, presents a picture of complete repose. At 
the same time the respiration is more or less modi- 
fied; it becomes slower, and . . . the amount of in- 
spired air is considerably diminished, so that in- 
stead of seven litres a sleeping man inspires only 
one litre. . . . Sleep produces a weakening of the 
action of the diaphragm. . . . Sleep modifies the 
entire character of the gaseous exchange in the body; 
there is a decrease in the quantity of the carbonic 
acid eliminated; and an increased absorption of 
oxygen. (" Sleep," etc., M. de Manaceine.) 

By this description we learn that in sleep there 
is a vast diminution in the expenditure of the body's 
energies. Instead of giving out its forces it is im- 
bibing unexpended energy from the air it breathes, 
while permitting the accumulated heat, which the 
supply of food has generated, to remain in the body, 
as evidenced by the diminution in the amount of 
carbonic acid eliminated. 

[125] 



The Physical Instruments. 



While we have said this much about the necessity 
of sleep, there is an obverse side to the shield which 
w^e must also study. While sleep is necessary to all 
human beings, there are some people who require far 
less than others. It is folly for such people to be 
exercised as to the loss of sleep if they find that they 
can absorb but five hours o'night, whereas other 
normal people seem to demand eight or ten. It 
would seem that in highly self-conscious people, and 
people of tremendous will and mental forces, as 
much sleep is not required as by others. Such 
highly complex organisms as were possessed by 
Humboldt, Napoleon, Mirabeau, Schiller, Frederick 
the Great, and others actually consumed but a com- 
paratively small portion of their lives in sleep. 
From this fact some have made the deduction that 
as the ages advance man will require less and less 
sleep till in some distant epoch man will sleep no 
more. This possibility, however, seems to be proved 
unlikely by scientists who have experimented on 
animals and human beings, and who have invariably 
found that sleep was even more necessary to life 
than food (de Manaceine). 

It might be helpful here to enumerate some of the 
successful methods which experience has discovered 
to battle against insomnia. The cause of insomnia, 
we are told, is the ansemic condition of the blood in 

[126] 



The Body. 



the brain and an enfeebled consciousness. There- 
fore, if the circulation can be regulated, it has often 
been found that normal sleep can be restored. The 
following prescriptions have been found available. 
Just before retiring engage in a bit of vigorous exer- 
cise to arouse the activities of the body and stir the 
blood through the system. Warm baths on retiring 
have been found effective. The patient stands over 
the edge of a tub in a room of 65° or 70° Fahr. and 
douches the head in hot water at 100° Fahr. then 
the entire body is rapidly immersed in water, begin- 
ning with temperature at 98° increasing to 105° and 
110°, then in a few minutes the body is removed 
from the tub and wrapped in blankets when as 
quickly as possible the patient slips into bed. A 
hot drink is taken and frequently a gentle and re- 
freshing sleep follows (de Manaceine). 

I have myself found that the brisk rubbing of the 
back of the neck at the base of the brain brings on a 
quiet sleep. Sometimes, especially in children, the 
gentle rubbing of the back down the spinal column 
will produce the same effect. 

But psychological experiments are often far more 
successful. The brain conditions seem to be more 
intimately associated with those of the mind than 
any other portion of the body. If the blood beats 
like a trip-hammer upon the cells of the brain and 

[127] 



The Physical Ijs^stktjments. 



awakens its irrepressible activity, in some way a 
diminution of such activity must be acquired in 
order to induce sleep. This is often successfully done 
by attending to humming, rhythmic movements or 
sounds, to the ticking of a clock, the running of a 
stream, the remembrance of a soporific human 
voice, or by any other device that will suggest 
drowsiness and stupor. There is an amusing passage 
in Southey's " The Doctor," which sets forth the 
underlying psychological law that induces sleep 
so well that I cannot refrain from quoting it : 

'^ I listened to the river and to the ticking of my 
watch; I thought of all sleepy sounds and of all 
soporific things — the flow of the water, the humming 
of bees, the motion of a boat, the waving of the 
cornfield, the nodding of a mandarin's head on the 
chimney-piece, a horse in a mill, the opera, Mr. 
Humdrum's conversations, Mr. Proser's poems, Mr. 
Laxative's speeches, Mr. Lengthy's sermons. I tried 
the device of my own childhood, and fancied that 
the bed rushed with me round and round. At 
length Morpheus reminded me of Dr. Torpedo's 
Divinity Lectures, where the voice, the manner, the 
matter, even the very atmosphere and the streaming 
candlelight, were all alike soporific; when he, who 
by strong efi'ort, lifted up his head and forced open 
the reluctant eyes that never failed to see all around 

[128] 



The Body. 



him asleep. Lettuces, cowslip wine, poppy syrup, 
mandragora, hot pillows, spider's web pills, and the 
whole tribe of narcotics, up to bang and black drop, 
would have failed — but this was irresistible; and 
thus, twenty years after date, I found benefit from 
having attended the course." While from this 
prescription we may not find it available to send 
insomnia patients to church to be effectively cured, 
we cannot but be amused and mournfully instructed 
by Southey's humorous narrative, especially when 
we learn he was describing a personal condition 
which finally led him into the state of melancholic 
insanity. 

This much at least we know, that for the over- 
worked and tired nerves, the exhausted muscles and 
the wearied brain, Nature has but one restorative, 
and that is sweet and wholesome sleep ; 

** Sleep, that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care, 
The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath, 
Balm of hurt minds, great Kature's second course, 
Chief nourisher in life's feast." 

A regular life, proper food, exercise, avoidance of 
dissipation, a clear conscience, and the cultivation of 
kindly and noble thoughts toward all mankind, will 
often be more effective in inducing Morpheus to take 
us to his arms than any device of drugs or dream of 
theorists. 

I [129] 



The Physical Instruments. 



III. RHYTHMIC BREATHING AND NERYE 
RESPONSE. 

So intimately associated are the numerous organs 
of the human system that they respond instinctively 
to one another. Especially is this true of the brain 
and the nervous system. What we must guard 
against most in order to preserve normal strength 
and capacity is such overtaxation of the brain activi- 
ties as to cause premature exhaustion in the cells. 
One of the great mistakes is the setting of distinctive 
tasks to be accomplished within a specific period. 
When it becomes necessary to do this, no ill-effects 
result if the effort is followed by proportionally long 
periods of rest. Lord Brougham demonstrated this 
by his capacity to work for several days at a time 
without any sleep or relaxation from his tasks. But 
he had so taught himself to recuperate his lost 
energies that he would follow such efforts by sleeping 
through an equally long period immediately after. 
It was by observing this method, we are told, that 
Napoleon was able to accomplish so many of his 
herculean tasks. He taught himself to sleep any- 
where and at any time, on horseback, in the midst 
of an engagement, on marches or in bivouac. His 
soldiers were experienced in sleeping soundly while 
they pursued their long marches for hours at a time. 

[130] 



The Body. 



But one of the most essential requisites for nerve 
and brain regulation, and an almost certain source 
of recuperative energy, is habitual and correct 
rhythmic breathing. The breath is indeed the 
inspirer and guide of all our labors. As we breathe 
we think; as we breathe we act; as we breathe we 
live. Persons with gasping and asthmatic, short 
and intermittent breaths, are incapable of deep and 
continuous thought. They suffer from the want of 
composure, loss of dignity, and absence of magnetic 
influence. Such people would be surprised to find 
how soon these qualities would be restored to them 
if they cultivated the proper method of inhaling the 
breath. Because of the extensive lung surface over 
which the breath is permitted to pass, the effort to be 
successful must necessarily be slow and protracted. 
While a quick breath suddenly and vigorously in- 
haled may reach far down to the lower portion of 
the lungs it does not permeate the cells because too 
speedily expelled. The breath should be drawn in 
and held for a while in order that it may percolate 
through all the minute avenues to which, if given 
time, it will find its way. 

It is ordinarily supposed that breathing should 
begin at the upper lungs and gradually descend. 
This is an error, and is contrary to nature. One 
need but observe the breathing of babies to discover 

[131] 



The Physical Instruments. 



the truth. The lungs, in early life, instinctively 
depress the diaphragm to make room for expansion. 
Only as the result of neglect does the diaphragm 
become in later years more rigid, and thus induce 
the lungs to breathe upward rather than downward. 
All breath should first penetrate the lower lungs 
and be gradually increased till the upper lungs are 
inflated. By this method one will be forced to 
breathe more slowly, gradually and rhythmically, 
and thus more effectively regenerate and invigorate 
all the cells as well as refresh and electrify the 
blood. A little practice will soon establish the 
habit, and the abdominal muscles will instinctively 
expand with each inhalation. 

As this custom is achieved, the nerves will 
gradually relax, their activities will become more 
rhythmical, the brain will work far more easily and 
effectively, and the dignity and composure of the 
body will be much enhanced. One will be surprised 
to find how speedily the baser passions, such as 
anger, lust, envy, hatred, jealousy, can be eliminated, 
or at least profoundly mollified, by the cultivation of 
rhythmic breathing. The cause of such effects is 
easily discerned in the physiological conditions. 
The baser passions are the spiritual reflexes of the 
state of the nerves. If they are intensely agitated, 
because of the presence of an internal or external 

[132] 



The Body. 



stimulus, it means that the impulses are seeking' 
unusual passage ways and are thus jarring and 
jangling the nervous threads. That is, they gyrate 
and SAving in distorted arches, becoming, we might 
say, confused and intertwined. Unless we can disen- 
tangle them, get them to swing back into the proper 
paths, we shall not be relieved from the unhappy 
mental states we experience as the reflex of their 
physical disturbance. It will be found that when 
we are subject to these baser passions, our breathing 
apparatus is also distorted and refuses to work 
normally. We gasp, breathe in jerks, the breath 
sometimes going and coming so swiftly that almost 
suffocation ensues; we grow exceedingly red, some- 
times partially black, in the face, our eyes are 
unusually dilated and the whites gorged with blood, 
while the salivary glands refuse to excrete and the 
tissues of the tongue and mouth are covered with 
a viscous and slimy membranous exudation. At 
such times, if one can but check one's self, and 
rhythmically inhale and exhale the breath, at the 
same time determining to contemplate nobler and 
more desirable thoughts, the victory will be easily 
attained. Whoever thought out the scheme of 
counting a hundred when angry before speaking 
came close to the law but just escaped it. Not 
merely the time is required which would be necessary 

[133] 



The Physical Instruments. 



to the counting, but such period of time must be 
filled with the exercise of correct rhythmic breath- 
ings and the assumption of the desirable mental 
attitude. Then indeed will the demon soon depart, 
as Klingsor fled from the magic spear of Parsifal. 

How are we to account for the diversity in human 
achievement? By what law are the happiness, 
health, and success of individuals established? No 
problem presents more troublesome intricacies, nor 
is more fascinating because of its apparent defiance 
of solution. Yet if we are to believe alienists, 
craniologists, and physiologists, the secret of the 
law is written in the very tissues of the fibres and 
cells of the nervous system. 

It is all a matter of organization: of the possible 
adaptability and association of distinctive cell- 
groups with one another in the great central system. 
If one be born with cells susceptible of expansive 
association with other sympathetic cells, even though 
their weight and size be less than in other seemingly 
better endowed individuals, the former is destined 
to triumph over the latter and carve out for himself 
a more successful career. To a very large extent 
we are limited in our capacities by the adaptability 
of our nervous systems to the work we undertake. 
There are some organizations so made that by no 
cultivation or nurture could they possibly be fitted 

[134] 



The Body. 



for certain vocations or professions. If thej at- 
tempted it, their lives would prove to be a most 
dismal and protracted failure. Many is the fond 
parent who insists on his child securing a classic or 
traditional education, little realizing that Nature 
has imperatively foreordained his utter failure in 
the attempt. At times parents and teachers, over- 
ruled by a conventional conservatism, have both 
wasted their fortunes and the unpliable energies of 
their offspring in the foolish endeavor to educate 
them in pursuits for which their organization has 
eternally unfitted them, and whose pursuit is little 
short of madness. Again the folly possesses some 
fond parents that only a boy should receive a 
professional education, whereas a girl is made only 
for motherhood. An old superstition long prevailed 
that the human female was born with a brain that 
made her incapable of pursuing the same studies 
and professions as men. This theory is now ex- 
ploded. For while the brain of a woman is com- 
paratively lighter than that of man, intelligence 
is not demonstrated by the brain weight, but by 
its finer organization and development in certain 
brain centres. Nature herself is the only prophet 
of the individual, and she does not classify her 
prophetic indications according to sex. I remember 
well a case in point of a devoted father who parented 
[135] 



The Physical Instruments. 



a boy and a girl. He was determined that the son 
should receive the traditional education, but that 
the girl should attend only a girls' seminary and 
learn chiefly domestic and ornamental accomplish- 
ments. After wasting a fortune on the boy, who 
failed in all his classes and was finally expelled from 
college, in spite of his father's wealth and protesta- 
tions, the girl took the reins of government in her 
hands and guided her own destiny. By dint of 
toil and drudgery she earned enough money to 
educate herself for what she instinctively felt to be 
fitted, and while her father cast her off as if she had 
been one of suspicious morals, she was finally able to 
laugh at him by demonstrating her ability as an 
accomplished and efficient physician with a large 
and lucrative practice. 

Ah, could we before birth but choose our parents 
how happy we might foreordain ourselves in the 
uncertain vicissitudes of life. For we are born with 
distinctive capacities which we have physically 
inherited and to divine these early enough in our 
career is the making of life's success. While it 
appears fatalistic to assert that our mental capacities 
are not only commensurate with our cranial organ- 
ization, but that we are even limited to circum- 
scribed brain groups as the instruments of our 



[136] 



The Body. 



achievements, yet in that very fact there lies more 
hope than discouragement. 

For Nature is not lax in revealing what she intends 
her children to undertake in this lowly pilgrimage. 
The fault lies chiefly in the prejudice and bias of 
tradition ; in the unwillingness of parents and 
teachers to heed her promptings; and in the fact 
that there is still very much extraordinary ignorance 
relative to the problem, among the entire race. 

But the fact that, in spite of false and ignorant 
education, so many precocious geniuses are found in 
each age, is proof of the persistency of Nature's 
determination in the formation of character and 
capacity. 

If we but better understood the rhythmic action 
of the nervous centres, and how their mutual 
juxtaposition invited to distinctive phases of educa- 
tion, we would all make a better triumph of our 
careers. It is a remarkable fact that the muscles 
of the body which lie nearest to the brain centres 
with which they are connected are more directly 
affected than those that are more distant. As for 
instance, it has been found that an idiot can be 
educated in the use of his hands, not by direct 
education of the fingers first, but by instructing 
him how to bring the shoulder under the control 
of his will. Then when he has mastered' the 
[137] 



The Physical Instruments. 



shoulder-control to attack the muscles just below, 
and so on down to the finger muscles. This suggests 
that certain cell groups are contiguously related, 
and that if we but understood their exact location 
we could work out an almost mathematically correct 
programme of education for each individual. 

But this much we may grasp. The nerves effect 
the greatest amount of work by rhythmic processes. 
If a set of nerves be actively employed during a 
certain period, and a temporary rest be given them, 
while another set of nerves is brought into action, it 
will be found when the return is made to the former 
group of nerves that they will respond with more 
vigor and pliability than when they were dismissed. 
Therefore, it is well to alternate the nerve groups 
by changing from one class of employment to 
another, when a sense of fatigue begins to seize the 
brain or body. Darwin never sought any other 
relaxation from his arduous mental labors than a 
resort to light reading, fiction, poetry, and narrative. 
After his brain was rested by such leisurely and 
pleasurable pursuit, he returned to the strained at- 
tention of his scientific labors with renewed energy 
and increased accomplishment. 

While without a doubt we are partially limited in 
our successful ambitions by the restrictions of our 
physical organization, yet we must not fail to 
[138] 



The Body. 



emphasize the fact that to some degree such limita- 
tion may be neutralized by mental effort. We have 
already observed the law of vicarious interchange of 
activities. We have noticed that if one organ be 
abused or abrogated, its office, to a certain extent, 
is assumed by another, and to some degree its 
functions are thus continued. Doubtless this fact 
becomes possible in the development of the organs 
because of the close proximity of the cranial cells 
between the distinctive groups which officiate in the 
respective offices. One might ask, for instance, how 
it can come to pass that, if one be blind, his hearing 
may be inordinately acute? Why should the instru- 
ment of the ear increase its capacity for work 
because the instrument of the eye had been Injured. 
An explanation of this fact may be found in the close 
relative positions of the optic and the auditory 
nerve-groups in the brain. We found that the nerves 
nearest the trunk were the first to be affected by 
the nerve impulses from the brain (as in the case of 
educating an idiot in the use of his fingers) . So we 
may believe that because the optic and auditory 
nerve groups are so close that when the one is in- 
jured the other receives the mental impulse and takes 
up its work. 

>This is particularly true of the vicarious work 
which may be set up between the olfactory and the 
[139] 



The Physical Instruments. 



optic nerve groups. Doubtless we have all observed 
that persons who do not see well have an acute smell ; 
or at least an olfactory capacity above that of the 
normal. It is noticeable among cats that their vision 
in the daytime is poor, no less than their olfactory 
sense. These two senses partially obtuse, the sense 
of hearing is extraordinarily developed. Dogs, on 
the contrary, have a comparatively poor sense of 
sight, and an indifferent auditory sense, but their 
olfactory sense is marvellously acute and penetrat- 
ing. The sense of vision may be tested by throwing 
a stick in the water. If thrown too far out the 
dog fails to detect it and refuses to go after it. 
But if a piece of meat is attached he will find it, 
at whatever distance. 

All this goes to show the interchange of the 
faculties of the senses. As I have said, the vicarious 
capacity of the organs may be physically explained 
by the relative juxtaposition of the brain groups 
which ofiSciate in the respective senses. Thus we 
may observe that the intelligence, or the mental 
energy, latent within the brain and urging on the 
specific cell groups to the performance of their func- 
tions, failing to effect results in the one instinctively 
resorts to another. The mind within knows no 
difference in the responsive capacity of any of the 
groups. But having become accustomed to operate 
£140] 



The Body. 



through certain distinctive groups for the execution 
of certain oflSces, if such groups be impaired and 
refuse to respond, the mind seeks another channel 
of expression, and usually persists till it discovers 
one. 

In the end, then, while we are to a large 
degree limited by our physical organisms and 
hereditary capacities, yet we must not fail to recog- 
nize this law of vicarious response in stating the 
law of potential individual capacity. We are not 
justified in asserting that an individual is absolutely 
limited by his physical organism. We must first 
observe to what degree the individual is mentally 
endowed, and whence has come his hereditary 
intelligence, before we set the limit to his possibili- 
ties. Having discovered that there is a promising 
hereditary intelligence, we may justly assume, that 
notwithstanding the apparent physical limitation 
of his organization, by proper influence and educa- 
tion this may be overcome and the spiritual force 
find an avenue for its expression. 

Thus often geniuses in their early years are dull 
and unpromising. Gibbon at school was not pro- 
phetic of the great historian he was to become. The 
accident of idleness in army life gave him the leisure 
that awoke the latent mental capacity which thus 
far his physical organization did not in the least 

[141] 



The Physical Instruments. 



seem to indicate. A still more emphatic illustration 
of how the ever-wakeful though clouded mind within 
the organization may sometimes, under genial influ- 
ence, awake to physical expression, is found in the 
life of William Cowper. All his younger life he gave 
but indifferent promise of what was in him. But 
under the care of the kindly Mrs. Unwin, even after 
his brain had snapped and he was unsound of mind, 
altho' full fifty years of age, he was led by slow 
degrees to cultivate his literary powers till he at one 
time resembled Milton in his achievements and at 
length gave to the world a worthy and most beautiful 
literature. 

In short, the mental force within the material 
organization is the supreme and guiding power. 
Confidence in its capacity and possibility will often 
fouse the melancholic to startling achievement and 
the discouraged to a degree of self-appreciation that 
inspires them to bcome useful individuals. The 
mind is the moulder of the brain groups; it carves 
out the character and affects the quality of the 
mechanism it determines to employ. Thus hj the 
more appreciating its tremendous potency we learn 
to enjoy higher confidence in ourselves, and the more 
successfully rescue ourselves from despondent and 
demeaning attacks of self depreciation, 
[142] 



CHAPTER VIII. 

^me^i O what extent is a man responsible to his 
l^gl^ ancestry and parentage for his character 
^P|; and career? Like all other organized 
composite units of the world man is a 
product of natural forces. There is nothing par- 
ticularly mysterious in his making if we trace all 
the forces that enter into it to their very begin- 
ning. It is true, man is " fearfully and wonderfully 
made." Science in this respect has corroborated the 
declaration of religion. But it requires no inspi- 
ration to reveal this truth when Nature herself af- 
fords us such ample intimation of its existence. 

We say that man is fearfully and wonderfully 
made, but we shall not fully realize what this means 
till we first understand how wonderfully and fear- 
fully made is the egg from which he is evolved. For 
the primal hum.an cell, that little dot of mysterious 
matter, in which inhere all the possibilities of 
J [145] 



The Moral Agents. 



human individuality and racial history, contains 
within its microscopic pages the full prophetic 
forestallment of the man to be. It is true that the 
tree is in the seed, the oak in the acorn, in a strictly 
literal sense. For while indeed the tree is not full- 
developed in miniature in the seed, it is also true 
that the full capacity of the tree is already potential 
in. the seed undeveloped. In short, what the tree is 
to be is forewritten in the seed. Yea, more than 
this, what the seed is to be is forewritten in the 
primal protoplasmic cytode, from which the cell and 
seed, the tissue and membrane, the leaf and flower, 
the tree and fruit, shall finally evolve. 

Two tremendously prophetic and startling facts 
greet us on the threshold of this study. The first 
marvel is that the germ-plasm, the primal life 
substance from which all forms of organic life 
proceed, is ever and absolutely similar and indis- 
tinguishable. No microscope can penetrate the 
mysterious depths of the speck of protoplasm and 
foretell its history. None can see within the myste- 
rious depths of the cell what may be its prophecy, 
whose fulfilment shall mean a fish, or bird, or 
reptile or a biped. Not till the cell begins to divide 
itself into a multitude of cells and at length under- 
takes to build up an organism can we learn the 
tendency of its development. Here in the primal 
[146] 



The Parents. 



womb of undifferentiated life lies the impenetrable 
mjstery of the individual life. 

But the second and still more startling marvel 
that confronts us is that the germ plasm from which 
each distinctive, differentiated and individual life 
proceeds, which in its own time shall expire and dis- 
appear, is not itself subject to death, but has ever 
persisted since the first slimy bit of living substance 
emerged from the cosmic breast. 

The life substance is found to consist of two 
elementary stages. The first stage is homogeneous, 
and as yet wholly indistinguishable. It exists with- 
out a nucleated centre. It is all alike. This is 
designated as the cyto-plasm. Had it never developed 
beyond this stage there would have been no such 
thing as individualized organic life on the globe. 
But it assumes a second stage, that is, the stage of 
the nucleus. When the nucleus is aggregated within 
the cytode, then comes the beginning of individual- 
ized life. Some mysterious force operates within the 
differentiating nucleus that causes the ultimate forms 
of organic expression to be diversified. " It is under 
the influence of the nucleus, that the cell-substance 
re-develops into the full type of the species. In 
adopting the view that the nucleus is the factor, 
which determines the specific nature of the cell, we 



[147] 



The Moral Agents. 



stand on a firm foundation upon which to build with 
security" (Weismann). 

But so marvellous are the workings of Nature 
that we can almost trace the evolution of the nucleus 
from the cyto-plasm, stage by stage. The nucleus of 
Weismann is not the ultimate differentiable division 
of the first form of the life substance. The nucleus 
itself reveals another centre, the nucleolus, and this 
again reveals a source from which it sprung, the 
nucleololus. But the possibilities of the microscope 
are not exhausted, and who shall say that We shall 
not jet discover the very point at which the plasm 
begins its differentiation into germinal nucleated 
expression. 

But what bearing does this have on the art of the 
making of a man? Much in every way. For we 
learn that within the primal plasm itself inhere the 
physical tendencies and potentialities of the entire 
race, in microscopic and miniature prophecy, while 
within the nucleus lie the profound forces that tend 
to separate the individual life from the composite 
life-tendencies of the race. So that when a plant, 
or an animal or a human being arrives at potential 
expression, in the procreation of the vital germ from 
the sexualized cells, it already contains within its 
infinitesimal form the impress of the entire history 
of the race, and the additional distinctive impress 

[148] 



The Parents. 



of a specialized line of descent which culminates in 
its parental source. 

THE WOEKING OF THE LAW OF HEREDITY. 

^^ Heredity is brought about by the transference 
from one generation to another of a substance with 
a definite chemical, and above all, molecular consti- 
tution. I have called this substance, ' germ plasm,' 
and have assumed that it possesses a highly complex 
structure, conferring upon it the power of develop- 
ing into a complex organism. I have attempted to 
explain heredity by supposing that in each ontogeny 
a part of the specific germ-plasm contained in the 
parent egg-cell is not used up in the construction of 
the body of the offspring, but is reserved unchanged 
for the formation of the germ cells of the following 
generation" (Weismann). 

By this law we learn how the species of each 
animal kingdom is generated and differentiated 
from all the rest, and how when once the species is 
produced each individual member maintains its 
distinctive characteristics. 

Thus, as Darwin reminds us, ^^ Heredity produces 

an exact copy of the parent in the child. We may 

feel assured that the inherited effects of the use and 

disuse of parts will have done much in the same 

[149] 



The Moral Agents. 



direction with maternal selection in modifying man's 
structure of body." In other words, not only does 
the force of the entire racial psychic energy enter 
into the production of a single member of the human 
family, but that racial force is itself modified by 
the special parental condition which affords the 
occasion for the generation of the offspring. 

While the hereditary force is absolute and manda- 
tory, yet this force does not move in a lineal direction 
— it does not follow a straight line. But there are 
counteracting forces, which though hereditary in 
their nature, yet mutually modify each other. The 
racial force is one hereditary element, but the pa- 
rental force is another, and the distinctive parental 
condition at the time of gestation is another force, 
and yet again the particular mental or emotional 
state of either parent at the time of conception is 
still another element in the process of hereditary 
evolution. But that the child is absolutely the 
product of these several elemental forces either 
cooperating or contending with one another, is a 
scientific fact beyond dispute. 

How that seeming miracle in Nature is achieved, 
that out of the countlessly myriad possible forms of 
life one distinctive, and one only, expression should 
come to pass, is one of the marked discoveries of 
biological science. Histology is the division of biol- 

[150] 



The Parents. 



ogy that treats directly of the cells and the cellular 
life. In this science so many marvels have already 
been discovered having a most practical bearing on 
human life and history, that it behooves us for a 
moment to study its results. 

We have already observed that in the formation 
of the nucleus, we find the origination of the future 
individual life. The race life lies germinally in the 
undifferentiated germ-plasm. The individual life 
lies in the slowly evolved nucleated centre of the 
germ-plasm. Here in embryo we have a most won- 
derful picture of the whole of human history. 

Each individual human life is merged in the life 
of the entire race. Yet, though it is environed and 
overwhelmed by the race-life, it is capable of main- 
taining its individual entity intact. In truth, be- 
cause of the persistent individual life the race life 
assumes the capacity of progress and enlargement. 
But this vast historical fact we find already pro- 
phetically foretold in the history of the microscopi- 
cal germ-plasm and its involved nucleus. Though 
the nucleus emerges from the undifferentiated pro- 
toplasm, is indeed its product and without it could 
have acquired no existence, yet once it comes into 
being it super-imposes itself on the plasm and re- 
duces it to its own use and purposes. 

This is precisely what the individual human being 
[151] 



The Moral Agents. 



has done and always will do in his relations with 
the race. Though he indeed could have acquired 
no differentiated existence were he not generated 
by the race, yet, once called into being, his individual 
potency rises into supremacy, and by his regal 
authority the race is moulded, forwarded, retro- 
graded, and restored. 

And now this vast historical law becomes oper- 
ative as the direct result of certain microscopical 
workings in the infinitesimal cell-unit of the indi- 
vidual life. For, as says Weismann, " A single cell, 
out of millions of diversely differentiated cells which 
compose the body, becomes specialized in a sexual 
cell, it is thrown off from the organism and is capable 
of reproducing all the peculiarities of the parent 
body, in the new individual which springs from it by 
cell division, and the complete process of differenti- 
ation." 

That is, once the primary cell becomes divided into 
two distinctive cells, mutually polarized, or co- 
related as is the male and the female in organized 
bodies, then begins the active operation of the law of 
heredity in the evolution of a distinctive individual 
life. In unicellular forms of life all lives are alike. 
Once the primary unicellular organism subdivides, 
then originates the sexual ized form of life, and by 
[152] 



The Pakexts. 



the future cooperation of these sexualized cells the 
hereditary evolution of racial and individual life 
proceeds. 

Here then we come at once upon the most impor- 
tant problem involved in the evolution of individual 
character. It is this, That the young life generated 
by the cooperative union of the parent stock is the 
direct product of the physical, mental, psychic, and 
moral status of the procreative conditions. The 
child is indeed the exact copy of the parents, as Dar- 
win says, but the conditions of the parents are at 
different times so variable and often so complex, 
that, even knowing the parents, it is absolutely im- 
possible to foretell what will be the character of the 
offspring. If it were not true that the offspring are 
immediately affected by the temporary conditions of 
the parents at the time of conception and gestation, 
then necessarily all children from the same parent 
stock would be exactly the same, and each would be 
a stereotyped facsimile of the responsible parents. 

But we are reminded, as for instance by Dr. John 
Cowan, that " the child's form of body, character of 
mind, and condition of soul, are, during the ante- 
natal state, like clay in the hands of the potter, and 
can be moulded absolutely into any form of body 
and soul the parents may knowingly desire." 

[153] 



The Moral Agents. 



PRE-NATAL INFLUENCE ON OFFSPRING. 

If parents but knew what potent architects they 
were enabled to become when they assume the holi- 
est and most responsible of all human activities in 
the creation of a human being, there would be far 
more seriousness involved in the voluntary assump- 
tion of such an office. 

But as a rule mankind enter into the procreative 
activities with apparently less seriousness and con- 
templation of the far-reaching consequences of their 
act than the inferior animals. For at least they are 
protected by Nature's prophetic instincts. No ani- 
mal suffers copulation if it be not seasonable and in 
response to the demands of parental desire. So 
fixed is this law that its appropriation by intelligent 
breeders has been the occasion for the generation of 
the high breeds in cattle, horses, sheep, fowl and so 
forth with which the markets abound. That the same 
law is applicable to the procreation of human life 
has been as yet but little appreciated by the vast 
majority of humankind. 

Too many human beings are so unfortunately 
parented that they come into the world much as 
Hamlet's inauspicious players, as though " some of 
Nature's journeymen had made them, and not made 

[154] 



The Parents. 



them well, they imitated humanity so abominably/' 
The only wonder is that there is not a vaster number 
of human misfits in the haphazard exigencies of pro- 
creative association. However there are quite 
enough to " give us pause," and force us to realize 
the abounding danger that confronts the human 
world. Without a doubt we are to attribute the 
prevalence of crime, degeneracy, imbecility, homi- 
cidal, and suicidal tendencies, to a large extent, to 
the mental states of the parents from which the 
unhappy offspring came. 

^^ It is well known to those familiar with criminal 
classes, that certain appetites and habits, if indulged 
abnormally and excessively through two or more 
generations, come to have an almost irresistible force 
and no doubt modify the brain so as to constitute 
an almost insane condition. This is especially true 
of the appetite for liquor and the sexual passion, 
and sometimes is also true of the peculiar weakness, 
dependence, and laziness which make confirmed 
paupers. The writer knows of one instance in an 
almshouse in Western New York, where four gener- 
ations of females were paupers and prostitutes. 

Almost every reader who is familiar with village 

life will recall poor families which have criminal or 

dissolute members beyond the memory of the oldest 

inhabitant, and who still continue to breed such 

[155] 



The Moral Agents. 



members. I have known a child of nine or ten years 
given up, apparently beyond control, to licentious 
habits and desires, and who under different circum- 
stances seemed to show the same tendencies; her 
mother had been a similar character and quite likely 
had her grandmother. The " gemmules," or latent 
tendencies, of forces or cells of her immediate an- 
cestors were in her system working in her blood, 
producing irresistible effects in her brain, nerves, 
and mental emotions, and finally, not being met 
early enough by other moral, mental, and physical 
influences, they modified her organization until her 
will is scarcely able to control them, and she gives 
herself up to them." (From Brace's "The Danger- 
ous Classes.'') 

I do not advocate, as many do, certain legislation 
for the regulation of the marriage rite, so that the 
production of the criminal classes shall cease to be 
increased. For I believe little could be done by 
legislation to either regulate or suppress it. If the 
law prohibit certain classes from intermarrying 
because of physical unfitness, the result would not 
be a decrease in the production of the criminally 
inclined, but an increase in the ranks of the illegiti- 
mately generated. Something higher than legis- 
lative enactment is needed. A law is utterly worth- 
less and inoperative unless there is behind it suflS- 

[156] 



The Parents. 



dent public opinion to sustain and enforce it. But 
when you have sufiQcient public opinion behind a 
law to sustain it then there is little necessity for the 
law. 

The people's will is a sufficient force of itself 
to impress the general public without the interven- 
tion of the legislature. But what is required on this 
all-important phase of human life is an awakened 
intelligence and conscience. We should fill the 
columns of our press, our platforms and pulpits 
should constantly re-echo, with reiteration of the 
solemn truths that must sometime sink into the 
souls of the multitude. The thoughtless and un- 
learned suffer themselves to be but little exercised 
upon the subject. They affiliate in the most intimate 
relations, fraught with the most far-reaching conse- 
quences, with, as I have said, a less serious appre- 
ciation of their responsibility than the inferior 
animals. 

But among the lettered and studious there is a 
kindred disposition to shift the personal responsi- 
bility involved to cosmic forces and uncontrollable 
antecedent causes. It is so much easier and far less 
fraught with the depressing sense of self-responsi- 
bility, to assume that the situation and conjunction 
of the stars is the immediate occasion for what dis- 
position and character will evolve in the prospective 

[157] 



The Moral Agents. 



offspring, that many allay their anxiety by recourse 
to such imaginings. 

The astrological laws are made the cosmic pro- 
creators of the mysterious life that lies within the 
microscopic cell, how much it may be the fruit 
of passing desire or magnetic impulse. Whatever 
truth there may be in the alleged astrological prin- 
ciples that overrule human life, it cannot be gain- 
said that were there sufficient instruction in these 
principles; and were human beings taught how to 
order their purposes according to the stars; the 
fruitage of their loves would avail more for human 
happiness and social progress. Doubtless, in some 
vague and incomprehensible way, the stars and con- 
stellations do exercise some influence on human lives 
as they do on plants and the inferior animals. 

But that the human mind has ferreted out the ex- 
act law of such stellar associations and conjunctions, 
so that future history and potential characters can be 
foretold, is scarcely within the truth. More than 
likely what successful prophecies have been made by 
astrologers are to be explained by Pascal's keen 
analysis of their arts than by precise knowledge of 
the stellar junctions. He relates, ^' They (the astrolo- 
gers) say that eclipses portend misfortunes, because 
misfortunes are common, so that, as some ill-chance 
often happens, they are often right; whereas if they 

[158] 



The Parents. 



said that tliej portend good fortune, they would be 
generally wrong. They also assign good fortune to 
rare conjunctions of the stars, and this is how their 
predictions rarely fail." 

ASTROLOGICAL INFLUENCES: ARE THEY 
TRUE? 

But the practical point of view to take of astrol- 
ogy, is not whether it be a true or a false science, 
but that whatever one believes about it, he should be 
so instructed that the use he may make of his as- 
sumed knowledge shall redound to his happiness and 
not to his misery. For, there is a higher law that 
prevails among mankind, and whose appropriation 
to one's destiny may often relieve one from mis- 
fortune and foreboding. I refer to the Law of Sug- 
gestion. Once the power of the human mind to im- 
press its impalpable energy upon other minds be 
realized; once the susceptibility of the mind to im- 
pressions made by conditions, conceptions, com- 
mands, personalities, and imaginary ideas, be ap- 
prehended; a principle has been discerned whose use 
may be of the highest benefit to the properly 
informed. 

^his principle may be especially employed to ad- 
vantage by all prospective parents. If for instance a 

[159] 



The Moral Agents. 



woman be sternly possessed of the idea that a child's 
future is controlled by a certain conjunction of the 
stars at the time of its birth, then the wise course 
to pursue would not be to attempt to undeceive her 
if one thinks she is deceived, but to suspend judg- 
ment as to her theory, yet appropriate it to the pos- 
sible advantage of her prospective offspring. 

The husband would be exceedingly unwise, who, 
not himself believing in the principles of astrology, 
yet having a wife whose belief therein is ardent and 
over-powering, attempts by argument, persuasion or 
force to undeceive her in the moment of her entrance 
upon the solemn responsibilities of approaching ma- 
ternity. If she believe in it let the husband, for the 
sake of the children that are to be, act as if he him- 
self also believed as she does; and let them so ar- 
range their nuptial attentions that the child shall be 
brought forth at such conjunction of the stars as 
shall in the mother's belief assure the future success, 
happiness, and harmony of her offspring. 

For, as a matter of fact, while the arrangement of 
the stars in the distant heavens, for aught we know, 
may have nothing whatever to do with the future 
status of the offspring, yet the mother's intense be- 
lief that the child's fate hangs upon the situation 
of the stars is a most important and available 
factor. If she think that Jupiter and the Sun in 

[160] 



The Pakents. 



conjunction will so control her offspring's destiny 
that he will grow into authority and the possession 
of a high sense of justice, while the stars may have 
nothing to do with the child's fate, her thinking so 
may indeed affect the child as she assumes the stars 
do. That maternal impressions upon the growing 
embryo are intimately associated with the fate of 
the prospective offspring may now be accepted as a 
scientific verity. 

"There is no physical cause discovered," says 
Charles Kingsley {Life^ vol. 11, p. 147 — see Scho- 
field's " Unconsious Mind," p. 321) why ova should 
develop according to their kind. To talk of law im- 
pressed on matter is to use mere words. How can 
law be impressed on matter? As seal or wax? Or 
as the polar arrangements of parts in a solid? If so, 
it is discernible by the microscope, and then it would 
not be law but a phenomenon. I am inclined to re- 
gard the development of an ovum according to kind 
as the result strictly of immaterial or spiritual 
agency.'^ 

The impressions of the parental mind upon pro- 
spective offspring sometimes works in a most sur- 
prising, yet convincing, manner. There is given an 
authentic case of a fair-haired Englishman marrying 
a Brazilian, dark-skinned woman. He lived with 
her for a time and she died. Then after an expira- 
K [161] 



The Moral AgentSo 



tion of twenty years he married an English lady as 
fair as himself, and the child born was distinctively 
of the Brazilian type. One writer explaining this 
phenomenon says, " The solution to this problem ap- 
pears to me ^ pyschological imprint ' ; that, having 
been deeply attached to his Brazilian wife, and 
having dwelt lovingly upon her memory for twenty 
years, the resulting offspring from his fair English 
wife bore the traces of long continued mental im- 
pressions rather than the result of merely having 
lived many years previously with a lady of darker 
hue." (See Schofield, ^' Unconsious Mind," p. 328.) 

THE THEORY OF REINCARNATION IN BIRTH. 

Another vain recourse to imaginary theorizing is 
becoming inconveniently popular among a certain 
class of dreamers. It is assumed by them that each 
human soul when it enters into the activities of the 
present life has not made its first entrance on this 
planet. That it has been here many times before, 
and that at each new entrance it carries into its 
unconscious being certain efiScacious and compul- 
sory qualities that peremptorily reveal themselves 
in the gradual evolution of its life. 

Hence, to account for the variety of characters 
found in the same family and reared under almost 
identical environment, it is assumed that the his- 
[162] 



The Parents. 



tory of the new-old soul is already written within 
its invisible tablets, which in time will be read of all 
mankind. There is much that is fascinating to an 
imaginary mind in the doctrine of reincarnation. 
But unfortunately we can find in the physiological 
and psychological principles, which inhere in the 
procreation of human lives, an all-sufficient law to 
account for the infinite idiosyncrasies of human 
character. 

If it can be shown that the character is not indeed 
foreordained but distinctively influenced by the men- 
tal force which prevails in the parents at the time of 
conception and during gestation, then, Nature, being 
unwilling needlessly to multiply her causative ener- 
gies, admits of no additional law in the premises. 1 
believe science now accounts for variation in human 
characteristics by well-known physiological and psy- 
chological principles. Chief among these principles 
is the one already referred to. Returning for a mo- 
ment to the curious mental experiences of Charles 
Kingsley, many at first would insist that they could 
be accounted for only by the theory of reincarna- 
tion. 

He informs us that for many years during his 

early life he had not visited Devonshire, but that 

somehow in his soul he often experienced a most 

intense desire to see it. At length when the happy 

[163] 



The Moral Agents. 



time arrived that made it possible for him to seek 
the Mecca of his soul, he was amazed to find it all 
so familiar. Every nook and crooked street, every 
haunt and sloping hillside, seemed a place he had 
already visited in some far-off time. What a specific 
and incontrovertible proof this must be of re-incar- 
nation ! 

But when we read that his mother herself sin- 
cerely believed in the possibility of maternal im- 
pressions on her future child, and purposely suffered 
her mind to dwell long and often on the beautiful 
and romantic haunts of Devon, during the waiting 
months in which she lovingly anticipated the advent 
of Charles, we can trace the psychological origin of 
his poetic soul. She was not disappointed, for the ro- 
mantic turn of his mind, which found such enchant- 
ing expression in " Westward Ho! " and '' Hypatia," 
doubtless owed its origin to her frequent musings 
on Devon's enchanting haunts. 

Children should not be snatched out of the unseen 
by reckless amorous indulgence. jSTothing more 
sacred, nor to which lives should mutually more con- 
secrate themselves, is possible to human beings than 
the procreation of a human soul. Therefore the re- 
solve to enter this Holy of Holies and conjure from 
the abysmal deeps of the unseen the wished-for visit- 
ant, should be obeyed only when two hearts in 
[164] 



The Parei^ts. 



mutual love avouch their yearning and devotion. 
When the proffer of motherhood is vouchsafed to 
man, if there be within his breast a spark of honor 
and humanity, he should feel that the time had come 
when all else in his life shall be merged in the sacred 
office to which he has consecrated his spouse. 

If it were true that men call down from the skies 
embryonic spirits who, thus conjured, mature into 
well-fleshed human lives, one could imagine the flut- 
ter that would take place among the possible victims 
who hover round the sacred chancel of the home. 

Each would gaze far down and cast resplendent 
glances through the gateway of mortality, wonder- 
ing if he enters there what fate will o'ertake him! 
What forebodings,— what hopes, what fears, what 
fascinations and foreglimpses would dance like mari- 
onettes through their dizzying minds, were they 
there, in fact, awaiting, till the call shall come. But 
this is indeed indulging pure imagination. We know 
not that there is the slightest truth in such fore- 
glimpses of future possibility. In truth, such pro- 
phetic imaginings are vain and futile. Better 
that we should keep nearer to the earth and learn 
the realities of human life. We do indeed conjure 
unborn lives, but in a less mystical manner than the 
Oriental mind fain would surmise. 

Souls come into being simultaneously with the 
[165] 



The Moral Agents. 



advent of the fleshly life. However, as the body is 
not full born at once, but slowly evolves during the 
gestatory period, till at last it comes into visible ex- 
pression, nor then even ceases to grow till the hour 
of expiration, so is the soul a growth, an expansion, 
an aggregate consummation of qualities engendered 
in the new-born life. The soul is itself an assemblage 
of many souls, and its own qualities consist of the 
mergence and compromise of the myriad souls 
evoked. The qualities of character in which we are 
conceived and nursed from the first moment of con- 
ception till the visible form emerges from the vast 
void, are the framework of the soul that at length 
constitute the inspiration of our lives. We conjure 
qualities, not spirits, characteristics, not organized 
souls, human dispositions, not angelic, when we build 
in the mother's breast the microscopic home for the 
invited guest. Therefore it is not wise to dwell on 
fantastic suppositions, in the attempted solution of 
the origin of human beings, but to resort to scien- 
tific facts and learn the simple truth. 

Our minds are the moulds into which are cast the 
plastic substance of yet unborn beings, which some- 
time shall become denizens of this sphere. There- 
fore when two souls are mutually consecrated to 
the conjuring of a new life into expression, they 
should learn to so cast the mental mould for its ap- 
[166] 



The Parents. 



proach that its expression shall be beautiful, noble, 
upright, and acceptable. 

Would you have beautiful children, beautiful in 
body and mind, surround the expectant mother's 
life with forms of beauty and ideals of harmony. 

I once knew a couple who, when they felt the hour 
had arrived for the sacred excursion into the un- 
seen, whence they would return with the unspeak- 
able mystery, resolved that henceforth during the 
long period of awaiting, the home, the thoughts, the 
mother's occupation and surroundings, the father's 
attention and vocations, should all point to the ar- 
rival of a child beautiful in body, in soul, in mind^ 
and in tendencies. The expectant mother's boudoir 
was hung with Correggio-like angel heads, peeping 
out from blue skies, the anticipating father read to 
her books that awakened only high and noble senti- 
ments, the minds of both were ever active that a 
sluggish brain might not be builded, yet coursing on 
such themes as would create a brain fit for rational 
and practical thinking. When at length, after much 
waiting, the mystical mould of throbbing life oped 
to the garish world, there lay as beautiful, smiling, 
rounded a form as eye would wish to see. The limbs 
were of perfect mould, the skull well-shaped and har- 
moniously carved, the features, such as could then be 
seen, giving high promise of intelligence and breadth. 
[167] 



The Parents. 



The child waxed strong, anon, and grew into a 
man of sterling character, keen mind, rational bear- 
ing, and a successful personage. 

Yet these parents were not at first harmonious 
with one another, their lives were often strained al- 
most to the breaking point, and apparently their 
mutual union was doomed to failure. But when to- 
gether they consecrated themselves to the noble work 
of gathering from the invisible elements a form of life 
that should become the expression of the highest and 
the best in each of them, then all was changed, and 
what seemed to spell failure was transposed into 
success and happiness. 

O, could all children be thus intelligently begotten 
and brought forth, how speedily would earth's ills 
and vices, woes and wrongs, be abrogated! When 
men shall learn the masterful power of their inner- 
most thought, its mystical influence on the yet un- 
born, they will escape the crime of bringing into the 
world the fruit of ill-conceived and ill-mated love. 

' ' As the most forward bud 
Is eaten by the canker ere it blow, 
Even so by love the young and tender wit 
Is turned to folly ; blasting in the bud, 
Losing his verdure even in the prime, 
And all the fair effects of future hopes." 

[168] 



The Pakexts. 



THREE QUALIFICATIONS. 

Three indispensable fundamentals should guide a 
united couple who resolve to conjure from the in- 
visible some embodiment of their hopes and ambi- 
tions. First, they should possess healthy, harmoni- 
ous, and vigorous bodies. Second, their minds 
should be alert and susceptible to knowledge and 
progressive truth. Third, their conscience should 
be free from offence to their fellowman and their 
God. 

A human being who permits him or herself to be- 
come a parent when the procreating body is in a 
state of ill-health, or slowly dying with some repul- 
sive disease, is an unwitting criminal, a silent but 
certain murderer.* 

The hereditary descent of disease is now beyond 
dispute. Therefore, people who knowingly give to 
the world offspring from parental stock poisoned 
with some slowly consuming disease not only offend 
society but create a child to almost certain suffer- 



* Dr. Harry Campbell in ' ' The London Lancet " (for 
states that : Theft and murder are considered the blackest of 
crimes, but neither the law nor the church has raised its voice 
against the marriage of the unfit, for neither has realized that 
worse than theft, and well-nigh as bad as murder, is the bring- 
ing into the world, through disregard of pre-natal fitness, of in- 
dividuals full of disease tendencies." 

[169] 



The Mokal Agents. 



ing. Morrison says, in his " Juvenile Offenders/' 
" The result of all recent research points to the con- 
clusion that human beings are born into the world 
with a distinct bent of temperament and character 
which will always manifest itself in some form, no 
matter what process of training the individual is 
called upon to undergo '^ (p. 120). 

If this be so, how dangerous it is to undertake the 
generation of a human soul with the instrument of a 
decayed, diseased, evilly-inclined and exhausted phys- 
ical body. The man and woman who are addicted 
to excessive use of alcholics are utterly unfit for 
the procreation of offspring. Indeed, society should 
rebel against their infecting the social veins with 
the virus of their vitiated blood. Siccard examined 
about 4,000 German criminals, in the prison of 
which he is the director, and found an insane, 
epileptic, suicidal, or alcoholic hereditary taint in 
36.8 per cent. Indeed, Ribot says. " Every work on 
insanity is a plea for heredity." Riddel, in his 
excellent work, ^^ The Child of Light," says, ^^ Careful 
estimates, based on the most reliable statistics 
obtainable in Europe and America, indicate .... 
that in 10,000 persons born from intemperate and 
inebriate families we should expect to find 8,250 
(82.5 per cent.) defective offspring; in 10,000 persons 
born from the normal population we should expect 
[170] 



The Parents. 



to find 4,820 (48.2 per cent.) defective offspring; 
while in 10,000 persons born of strictly temperate 
families 2,100 (21 per cent.). Thus it will be seen 
that 60 per cent more of the offspring of the inebriate 
or intemperate families die in infancy, are epileptic, 
feeble-minded, or inherit alcoholic, insane, or crimi- 
nal tendencies, than the offspring born from temper- 
ate parents.'' 

If parents have been addicted to the alcoholic 
habit, they should, by what force of will they can 
call into play, at least restrain themselves for a 
suflScient period before the determination to conjure 
a human being into life, and during the delicate 
period of gestation, for the child's sake, if they 
cannot for their awn. How pitiable it is to see 
a beautiful boy or girl, w^hom one admires for form 
of body, clearness of eye and keenness of brain, 
suddenly develop at a certain period of life a tend- 
ency to dullness, loss of memory, indifference, or in 
short both moral and mental lassitude! But how 
doubly saddening, not to say sickening, it is, when 
one learns that the beautiful child at first so much 
admired is now manifesting in its late regrettable 
characteristics certain inherited traits derived from 
alcoholic parents, who, perhaps unwillingly enough, 
sent down into its little stream of life the deadening 
taint of a criminal heritage ! 
[171] 



The Moral Agents. 



O, Man, whoever you are, if before marriage you 
have indulged your appetite, your lust, your fleshly 
craving, now that you are married, recall your duty 
to the race, to yourself, to your offspring, and by 
the might of a stung conscience sw^ear off, and re- 
solve to let the accursed stuff alone, so long at least 
as you permit yourself to become a parent. If your 
own life is already blasted, how can you, without 
experiencing the unbearable sting of an offended 
conscience, presume to endue another life with the 
vicious seeds of your own curse ! 

But women perhaps are more to be blamed than 
they imagine for bringing into the world a race of 
partial derelicts and enfeebled offspring, more be- 
cause of their ignorance than their determination. 
Woman, so long the slave of the kitchen stove, now 
reclaimed to liberty and free opportunity, often on 
consecrating herself to the office of motherhood, for- 
gets the physical duty she owes to her prospective 
offspring. When once the woman is conscious of 
the honor of possible motherhood, then all her 
thoughts, her occupations, her life, should be con- 
centrated and devoted to the happiness and welfare 
of the child she has invited to her breast. She alone 
is conscious of its existence; for its little heart beats 
against hers, its little life palpitates simultaneously 
alone with hers. Therefore, as she is the temple 
[172] 



The Parents. 



for the indwelling of this angel form, how needful 
that she keep the temple pure and clean, holy and 
consecrated ! 

But so many women, out of sheer neglect and 
laziness, crush the little mysterious life within, 
either by want of sufficient exercise, or because of 
a criminal mode of dress, or neglect of sufficient 
ablutions, or spurred by some absurd and senseless 
notion of immodesty. 

I have known young women who, when first realiz- 
ing the fact that they had become mothers, were 
thrown into the most appalling states of melancholy 
and despair. Their great anguish seemed to have 
been caused by the notion that they were unfortunate 
cynosures, whom everybody pointed out as immodest 
representatives of the race. The fact that the 
physical frame itself revealed the secret, threw them 
into unhappy states of mind and soul. Often 
children have as a consequence been either stillborn, 
or have come into the world enfeebled and cursed 
from their mother's breast. 

A sense of shame seems to seize the expectant 
mother, as though she had committed some overt 
crime. This is, of course, the absurd result of a 
false modesty, which has too long possessed the 
race. There is nothing disgraceful in the natural 
and proper association of the sexes; and did not 

[173] 



The Moral Agents. 



Nature intend that the race should be propagated 
by natural methods, undoubtedly long since the 
genius of man would have contrived artificial 
methods to supersede them. But no woman need 
be ashamed of that conformation of her figure which 
in itself causes even the most brutal and coarse- 
grained man to pause and uncover out of respect. 
Instinctively men honor motherhood. It is a nota- 
ble fact that in all the religions of the race, woman, 
when exalted into the state of motherhood, has been 
placed among the gods. The great goddess, whether 
the mother of Buddha, of Christ, the Sancta Dea of 
the Eomans, always the same, it is the apotheosis 
of the mother-woman, the fountain-head of all the 
race. 

Notwithstanding this, many young women still 
feel they are ashamed when motherhood overtakes 
them. I once witnessed a sad and most grievous 
illustration of this fact. A young wife found herself 
with child. The conscious possession of the myste- 
rious fruit of love worked so inauspiciously upon 
her mind, that, as the months grew on apace, she 
became disconsolate, ashamed, remorseful. A sense 
of guilt seized her soul. She had somehow sinned 
against her aesthetic and moral sense. Her body 
had become deformed. Her beauty was shattered. 
Her figure was repulsive. Who could look upon 

[174] 



The Parents. 



her and not blush; who could see her and not know 
her offence? These thoughts sank deeply into her 
consciousness till they became the burden of con- 
stant brooding and finally swept her into hysteria 
and melancholia. 

She shut herself away; none could see her. Even 
her husband was denied her presence. Finally she 
ensconced herself in a dark room, where she re- 
mained for almost six months till she could not en- 
dure the slightest ray of light, shrieking with pain 
if the dark-green shades were lifted even an inch 
above the window-sill. When the hour arrived for 
the child's deliverence, the mother's body had so 
shrunk that the imprisoned baby form could not be 
released save by a surgical operation. This resulted 
in the practical slaughter of the infant; while the 
mother's life was preserved only by a miracle. 

All this horror had come upon her because of a 
false sense of shame, resulting from an extremely 
false conception of conventional modesty. A few 
years later, she, freed from the temporary insanity 
which had dragged her mind into its gloomy depths, 
resolved once more to lay herself on the altar of 
motherhood. But now she did so with no false and 
foolish notion of the immodesty of the pregnant 
form, but with a consecrated and exalted perception 
of the glory of pure motherhood. Instead of shutting 

[175] 



The Moral Agents. 



herself away in a dark room and brooding on her 
imagined misery, she courted the sunlight and the 
fresh air; she subjected her body to rigid and sensible 
callisthenic practices; she took frequent baths, and 
scientific exercises in her bed before rising a- 
mornings and at night before retiring. She would 
crawl slowly out of her bed headforemost when aris- 
ing, and climb up and down a flight of stairs on 
all fours during the day. She read beautiful and 
uplifting literature, avoiding everything that was 
morbid or unduly exciting; she frequented beautiful 
and romantic landscapes and communed much with 
Nature. 

She lived a free, radiant, hopeful life, warmly 
and sympathetically assisted by her husband, 
through the long expectant months. And then the 
hour came for the veil to be drawn aside and the 
mysterious sculpture in flesh and blood to be laid 
upon her panting breast. When she beheld it, witTi 
tearful eyes and soft, feeble murmur ings of joy, the 
angels must have hovered round and blessed her, for 
her happiness was unrestrained. 

This child was the fruit of love and common sense; 
the former child had been the fruit of love vitiated 
with a perverse sense of false and demeaning 
modesty. 

[176] 




CHAPTER IX. 

ROBABLY the most responsible and the 
least seriously appreciated office in life 
is that of the Teacher. The parents are 
chiefly responsible for the pre-natal in- 
fluences cast into the plastic mould of the child 
in its invisible building, and for the treatment it 
receives in the formative period of impressionable 
infancy. But very soon the little bundle of possi- 
bilities is thrown off the mother's breast and led 
away from the fireside and the nursery into the wider 
world, where reigns the much-dreaded schoolmaster, 
who is destined to hold so potent a sway over all 
its remaining youthful years. 

The child soon learns to supplant the authority 
of the parents by that of the school teacher. Some- 
how, how much soever the instinctive reverence 
for parents may continue to kindle the breast of the 
growing infant, once the formidable presence of the 
J. [177] 



The Moral Agents. 



Teacher overshadows its life, the seat of authority 
is transplanted from the fireside to the desk. The 
fear of the ferrule is mightier than the dread of the 
tongue. A mother may scold and punish, but the 
humiliation is nothing compared to that which 
follows the scorn of the schoolmaster or the smart of 
the rattan. Probably more lives h^ve been ruined 
by incompetent and unwise teachers than by 
indifferent and foolish parents, though doubtless 
more noble lives have been moulded in the school- 
room than have been generated in the domestic 
circle. Chiefly, parents give children to the world; 
teachers build the children into what they are to 
become. 

Therefore, the ordinary disregard with which 
the school-ma'am is treated in the amenities of 
society, her unjust and unhappy classification as 
an underling and a dependent, is one of the shameful 
and disgraceful characteristics of our as yet partially 
unfolded civilization. Underpaid, undervalued, 
under-honored, and under-estimated, the school 
teacher is, perhaps in some respects, the most piti- 
able and painful individual who performs a high 
office for the benefaction of mankind. 

The mass of people have as yet but a diminutive 
appreciation of what the teacher accomplishes for 
the race. Once it was supposed that the teacher 

[178] 



The Teacher. 



had to do with nothing but the child's mind, to 
train it in a few minor habits of thought, and 
accustom it to the use of certain formulae which 
shall free it from embarrassment in subsequent 
relations with the world. If a child were but taught 
the three R's, and how to write a decent English 
sentence, and speak without too many solecisms of 
speech, he was supposed to have been made an 
educated gentleman. But in recent years we have 
learned that such an estimate of the office of the 
school teacher is far beneath its legitimate pro- 
portions. 

There is, in fact, no conceivable relation existing 
between man and man, no method of thought, no 
exercise of the imagination, no state of health or 
use of hygiene, no moment, indeed, of a man's life, 
from the hour he plunges into the arena of life's 
battle till his final obsequies, on which in some 
manner the teacher has not left an indelible im- 
pression. His work is not indeed that of the narrow 
schoolroom, but of the wide world itself. He does 
not educate minds, he moulds characters. He is not 
a mere teacher of alphabets, but a maker of lan- 
guages. Like the artist who works in clay, out of 
the plastic stuff he pats and kneads and patches the 
final form of beauty on which his dreams so long 
have dwelt. 

[179] 



The Moral Agents. 



THE TRUE OBJECT OF EDUCATION. 

The teacher teaches not so much how to think 
as how to live. " How to live," exclaims Herbert 
Spencer, " that is the essential question for uSo 
Not how to live in a mere material sense only, but 
in the widest sense. The general problem which 
comprehends every special problem is the right 
ruling of conduct in all directions under all circum- 
stances. In what way to treat the body; in what 
way to treat the mind; in what way to manage our 
affairs; in what way to bring up a family; in what 
way to behave as a citizen; in what way to utilize 
all the sources of happiness which Nature supplies; 
how to use all our faculties to the greatest advantage 
of ourselves and others; how to live completely. 
And this being the great thing needful for us is, by 
consequence, the great thing which education has 
to teach. To prepare us for complete living is the 
function which education has to discharge; and the 
only rational mode of judging of any educational 
course is to judge in what degree it discharges such 
function." 

By this dictum, then, what shall we say of the 
ordinary teacher and of the conscious realization 
of his responsibility to society? Is the ordinary 

[180] 



The Teacher. 



teacher even half-sensible of the tremendous offices 
of which Spencer speaks. Is he really concerned in 
the actual life of the individual ; does he commune 
suffi^ciently with the inner and secret tendencies of 
his pupil's habits? Is he, in short, his friend and 
companion; or a mere perfunctory officer who re- 
strains by the lash, if decorum demand it, and disre- 
gards the effect of his actions on the after-character 
he is unconsciously moulding? 

It is naturally most difficult for the teacher to- 
day to be also the friend and companion. In the 
public school system of our great cities, the classes 
are necessarily so large that immediate and personal 
intercourse between teacher and pupil is almost 
impossible. Notwithstanding it is the loyal thing to 
sustain and honor our public schools, yet each 
parent must decide for himself whether his own 
children should attend them. 

It goes without argument, that if there be any 
psychological principles involved in the art of edu- 
cation, and we shall soon see that they are the most 
important of all the principles involved, then there 
are thousands of children whom to educate in the 
crowded rooms of our public school system is almost 
a crime. The highly nervous, the intense, the sensi- 
tive and delicately imaginative children, who are 
thrown into a maelstrom of seething, struggling, 

[181] 



The Moral Agents. 



quarrelling, inchoate and fragmentary lives, such as 
gather within the walls of our great schoolhouses, 
where frequently several thousands are assembled 
under one roof, are almost to be pitied as much as 
the wretched Christians who were sacrificed in an- 
cient Rome to gratify the appetite of her patriotic 
citizens. 

I will mention one case only which is typical and 
illustrates thousands that could be described. A 
young lad yet beneath his early teens was sent by 
his admiring mother into the maw of one of these 
immense institutions. His was a highly sensitive 
and nervous organism, gifted with keen imagination 
and plastic sympathy. At his mother's knee he 
learned with ease and aptitude. So sweetly did 
their two souls merge as one that what the mother's 
mind contained entered almost spontaneously into 
the mind of the child. So closely knit were their 
two souls in sympathy that however much patience 
and care the exercise called for, the tender mother 
never failed to command them. The child waxed 
strong in health, keen in mind, and clever in thought. 

Yet after he had been but a few weeks in the swirl 
and strange excitement of the new world to which 
his loving mother had entrusted him, he seemed to 
sink rapidly in strength, his mind lost its clearness, 
instead of progressing he fell backward in his 

[182] 



The Teacher. 



studies, and had he continued under the pressure 
would doubtless have developed into a derelict. He 
was soon after removed to a private school, where the 
Headmaster discovered his sterling qualities, and 
where there were but few pupils and each could 
receive the personal attention of their respective 
teachers, with the result that he developed rapidly 
in his mental powers, his health improved, and he 
graduated with the highest honors, entering College 
thoroughly equipped to contend with the brightest 
scholars he might meet. 

Taking this example as a cue, I shall proceed to 
analyze certain psychological principles which are 
manifestly involved in the art of education and to 
which every teacher should give serious and con- 
scientious consideration. 

First of all, the parallel development of the 
physical and mental faculties in the growth of a 
child should be intelligently observed. The very 
suggestive fact, that the skull of the infant is not 
yet hardened, but is still soft and pliable, affords 
food for thought. Nature must have some reason 
for this; or at least we may say Nature evidently 
has not yet completed her work in the construction 
of the skull, till the child is perhaps a year or two 
old. Why is this? 

Manifestly because the new-built brain is as yet so 
[183] 



The Moral Agents. 



little developed, or grown, that if the skull were 
speedily locked and there were no room for expan- 
sion, the brain would not mature beyond the primi- 
tive stage of infancy or practical idiocy. The brain 
cells grow very rapidly and to a very large size, in 
proportion to the absorption of knowledge of the 
outer world. Some philosophers tell us that a child 
learns more in the first two years of its existence 
than in all its subsequent life. Imagine, then, what 
room the rapidly spreading brain cells must require, 
and what a disastrous result would follow the speedy 
locking of the bony structure which encloses the 
great ganglion. 

PSYCHIC GROWTH OF INFANCY. 

Nature's wonderful provision in prolonging the 
period of human infancy, far beyond that of the 
lower animals, is thus explained. There is so vast 
a world of information for the human child to 
absorb, that if its infancy were no more protracted 
than that of the horse, or cat, or dog, the brain 
would not be able to expand .to the necessary size, 
and all of life's functions would be materially inter- 
rupted and at last destroyed. This is still the vege- 
tative period of a child's life, when its education is 
merely reflexive, the impulses and disposition of the 

[184] 



The Teacher. 



child automatically responding to external stimuli. 

In this period, then, the influences that may in all 
the future effect the child's imagination, observation, 
and attentive qualities, should be as much guarded 
and intelligently guided as at any future period. 
This is, however, the period during which the care- 
less nurse girl is granted the chief disposition of the 
infant, subject to her caprice and uncertain, even 
reckless, attention. How much the child at this 
period should be surrounded by beauty and 
artistically moulding influences none knows better 
than the observing mother. Far earlier than we 
ordinarily imagine the child's future is already 
prophesied in its childish yearning for what time 
and change may present. 

I remember an infant, not yet two years old, 
just beginning to lisp and chatter, so overwhelmed 
by its father's crude effort to explain an astronom- 
ical fact to it, that all its frame was aquiver 
with excitement. It required " no ghost " to come 
from the grave to inform us that woven in the 
very tissues of that child's brain was the passion- 
ate yearning for pure science, which its future years 
fully demonstrated as they approached the bloom 
of youth. It would have been cruel to have de- 
prived such a child of free and full opportunity 
to commune with Nature and feel slowly weaving 

[185] 



The Moral Agents. 



into his mould of being the subtle threads of knowl- 
edge that shaped the fabric of his mental character. 
Yet how few think of what effect the passing cir- 
cumstances and events of life may bring into the 
soul of an undeveloped infant in its cradle! 

But when the babe passes from the suckling infant 
to the walking child, a parallel psychic stage de- 
velops with the physiological. His little mouth no 
longer hangs upon the mother's breast, but has 
learned to feed itself with the help of its own hands. 
The little feet and knees no longer cling closely 
to some sustaining article of furniture for poise, 
or crawl timidly upon the floor, but are now firm, 
independent, and can move freely from place to 
place. The dependent locomotion has changed to 
independent action. The helpless child leaves off 
his involuntary and unconscious activity and now 
acts with conscious effort and independent choice. 

What a vast change has now occurred ! Here be- 
gins the real school age : the age when the man is al- 
ready germinally made and the roots are being deeply 
planted. Some authorities circumscribe this age be- 
tween the period of two and seven years. What un- 
speakable horror a civilization presents that confines 
children at this most critical period of their existence 
in the coarse and vulgar atmospheres of industrial 
factories! Yet when we remember that in our own 

[186] 



The Teachek. 



land of liberty and enlightenment perhaps a full 
million of babes are thrown into the maw of this 
Moloch of commercialism, we cannot but fear that 
our future citizenship is being stunted, deformed, 
and de-humanized. That they will automatically 
reflect the conditions that surround them; that 
their minds as well as their bodies will be stunted 
and undeveloped; that they will return to society 
the evil with which society coercively endows them; 
is all too apparent to students of sociology. 

The brain is furnished only with what it receives 
from the external world. There is no interior realm 
of knowledge which the mind drinks in from some 
invisible and mysterious fountain. The well-known 
case of Kaspar Hauser fully demonstrates this law. 
An infant confined from the first moment of its 
existence in a dark room where all knowledge of 
the outer world was withheld, and fed only by 
momentary attendants who furnished the food, when 
at sixteen years he was at length released to the 
world, his mind was but a vacuous and empty shell, 
his brain vibrated with not a single thought, his heart 
responded to no human emotion. He must be taught 
at sixteen what a babe at two years should have 
known. Thus we see how instinctively, how vegeta- 
tively impressionable the minds of babes and infants 
are, and how severely cautious we should be concern- 

[187] 



The Mobal Agents. 



ing their surroundings, whether natural, social, 
mental, physical, internal or external. 

The great, true educators of the race have ever 
felt the force of this pedagogic law. For ages it was 
forgotten or overlooked, till such teachers as Comen- 
ius, Froebel, and Pestalozzi recalled it to a selfish 
and unregenerate age. So thoroughly did Pestalozzi 
comprehend the progressive method of education, an 
education that followed closely the intimations of 
Nature, that he insists upon a sound, rounded, 
scientific education as only proper to the true prog- 
ress of mankind. '^ Sound education," he says, 
'' stands befo^ie me as a tree planted near fertilizing 
waters. A little seed, which contains the design of 
the tree, its form and proportions, is placed in the 
soil. See how it germinates and expands into trunk, 
branches, leaves, flowers, and fruit! The whole 
tree is an uninterrupted chain of organic parts, the 
plan of which existed in seed and root. Man is 
similar to the tree. In the new-born child are hid- 
den those faculties which are to unfold through 
life. The individual and separate organs of his being 
form themselves gradually into a harmonic whole, 
and build up humanity in the image of God." 

Almost always the mental quality of the child will 
reveal itself in response to some external excite- 
ment. Some children would look on the beautiful 

[188] 



The Teacher. 



colorations of a waterfall playing in the morning 
sunlight, and be utterly unmoved, but among them 
will be found a few who will be so thrilled and ex- 
cited that they will reveal the instinctive artistic im- 
agination which lies latent in their natures. A New- 
ton sees in the fall of an apple the secret law of the 
universe. Yet had not his mind been trained from 
childhood to such meditative observation the apple 
might have fallen for him, as it had for millions be- 
fore him, without engendering a single scientific 
suggestion. 

Tyndall, a lad of twelve years, beholds maggots in 
the meat and instinctively thinks out the theory that 
the maggots were spontaneously generated within 
the bovine substance. Had not his young mind 
been privileged with such natural stimulants as 
would excite him to scientific study he would not 
have developed into one of the great physicists of the 
nineteenth century. 

The secret which Nature intimates is that some- 
how there is inwoven into every human life a ten- 
dency to pursue certain routes of occupation, mental, 
j)hysical, artistic or industrial. It therefore becomes 
the bounden duty of teachers to carefully observe 
the hints of Nature, and help the young subjects of 
their wills to such true education as shall enable 
them to compass Nature's suggestion in the practical 
[189] 



The Moral Agents. 



accomplishments of their lives. It is criminal to 
educate all children alike; to throw them into the 
same hopper and expect to grind them all out alike 
as useful grist for the bread of the world. 

THE PERIOD OF ADOLESCENCE. 

But the most serious age, and the one most 
fraught with future possibilities in the maturing 
life of the child is the age of puberty, the age that 
verges on manhood and womanhood. Not only is 
this period crowded with physical dangers to the 
improperly or carelessly instructed child, but its 
mental future is alike susceptible of most deleterious 
influences if unhappily guided. 

It is perhaps the most shameful comment on our 
heedless method of education that young boys and 
girls are permitted to pass through this trying 
period without such personal and cautious informa- 
tion as should be theirs, and without which they 
cannot successfully prosecute the battle of life. 

Dr. G. Stanley Hall, in his masterful and com- 
prehensive work on " Adolescence," speaks a word of 
necessary warning when he says : " Sex is the most 
potent and magic open sesame to the deepest mys- 
teries of life, death, religion, and love. It is, there- 
fore, one of the cardinal sins against youth to 

[190] 



The Teacher. 



repress healthy thoughts of sex at the proper age, 
because thus the mind itself is darkened and its 
wings clipped for many of the higher intuitions, 
which the supreme muse of common sense at this, its 
psychological moment, ought to give. If youth are 
left to themselves and the contagion of most environ- 
ments, this mental stimulus takes a low turn toward 
lewd imaginations, and vile conceptions, which 
undermine the strength of virtue, and instead of 
helping upward and making invulnerable against 
all temptation, it makes virtue safe only in its 
absence, and prepares the way for a fall, when its 
full stress is first felt." (Vol. II, p. 109.) 

So few parents are as yet educated to their duty 
in this the most momentous and far-reaching period 
of the life of youth, and even where they are educated 
to a righteous sense of their duty are still so timid 
and overcautious lest their words be misinterpreted, 
that millions of young men and women are falling 
into the way of temptation to be devoured by vice 
and sensuality. Often a single, sensible, intelligent 
word will save them. As parents, because of a 
false racial indisposition, fail so frequently in this 
mandatory duty, why should not the teachers who 
have control of that period of young life which verges 
on manhood and womanhood assume the responsi- 

[191] 



The Moral Agents. 



bility and reveal to youth the ever-fascinating mys- 
tery of the sexual demands of the human organism? 

Nowhere in the whole range of education is more 
intelligence, more caution, more seriousness and 
sincerity, called for than when the time arrives to 
impart the meaning of this profound and confusing 
mystery to the rapidly ripening mind of youth. 
The majority of parents would doubtless fail, if they 
undertook the tremendous responsibility involved in 
imparting the proper instruction, both, because of 
their native timidity, resulting from too little sincere 
companionship with their children, and because of 
their mental inability to shape the expressions in 
such a way as to be free from prurient suggestive- 
ness and unwitting excitation. 

I would therefore enter a plea that this may be 
made a portion of the school curriculum, so that at 
the proper age the children who are just approaching 
puberty shall be correctly, scientifically and sensibly 
instructed in their duty to themselves, to the oppo- 
site sex, and to the world in general. Delicate, 
tender, sympathetic words are demanded in such 
work; words and expressions which must be psychic- 
ally apprehended and so sympathetically imparted 
that their effect shall be for the benefit, and not for 
the injury, of their hearers. 

Teachers themselves should be instructed by prop- 
[192] 



The Teachek. 



erly equipped physicians and ethically guided in the 
performance of this most serious of all duties. 
Naturally, it is always better that parents or elder 
sisters and brothers should impart this information, 
if they be properly equipped for the duty; but as 
there is such universal disregard of this solemn re- 
sponsibility in the family circle, I submit that the 
duty devolves on the teachers who have supervision 
of the tender age between youth and manhood, maid- 
enhood and womanhood. Once the teachers were 
properly instructed, they would learn to detect the 
psychological moment when the knowledge should be 
imparted. It is revealed in the carriage of the body, 
the light and shadow in the eyes, the complexion of 
the cheek, the tremor of the voice. It is detected in 
the 

" Maiden, with the meek brown eyes, 
In whose orb a shadow lies, 
Like the dusk in evening skies." 

Happy the mother who knows the sign and possesses 
the tongue and mind to speak correctly. It is de- 
tected in the 

Hollow cheek and lingering eye, 
Youth reveals with empty sigh, 
"When some maiden brushes nigh. 

Ignorance at this momentous juncture in life is in- 
M [193] 



The Moral Agents. 



excusable; to refuse to act when duty is discerned, 
is criminal. 

THE CRIME OF CORPORAL PUNISHMENT. 

Because of the utterly unwarranted ignorance of 
teachers concerning this physiological and crucial 
period of the life of youth, they are incapacitated to 
act as disciplinarians and proper ethical guides. 
Because of the exuberance and physical vitality of 
youth their uncontrollable obstreperousness is often 
mistaken for wilful misconduct, and the supposed 
proper punishment is inflicted. Flogging and physi- 
cal humiliation seems to be most necessary to the 
improperly educated teacher at the very period of 
youth when it should be least resorted to. 

Corporal punishment should be absolutely and 
finally abolished in all the schools, first, because it is 
usually demanded at the most critical period of the 
sexual development of youth, and second, because it 
is usually inflicted when the teacher is exasperated 
and angry, and results in merely intensifying the 
evil-disposition of the pupil instead of reforming 
him. It seems to be now universally accepted by all 
authorities on criminal studies that flogging as a 
curative is an utter failure. 

Too often the vital force of the child is deteri- 
[194] 



The Teachek. 



orated because of horrifying sexual excitations 
aroused by the physical punishment, of which the 
teacher is wholly ignorant, but which sometimes 
results in the complete ruin of the unfortunate vic- 
tim. Doubtless in perhaps ninety per cent, of crimi- 
nally inclined youth the disposition may be traced to 
a physical weakness or a mental deformity. 

Punishment therefore should not be inflicted which 
will but aggravate the malady, without correcting 
the incorrigibility, but a curative should be admin- 
istered that will prove effective. Lombroso says: 
^' The recent researches of Dr. Warner . . . found 
that there is a larger percentage of abnormal chil- 
dren in the industrial (i. e. reformatory) schools 
than in any other class of schools. Dr. Warner ex- 
amined nearly two thousand children of both sexes 
in industrial schools in London and the country, and 
of this number 591, or more than 29 per cent., pre- 
sented physical or mental defects. . . . The defects 
noted by Dr. Warner consisted of smallness of stat- 
ure, smallness of head, affections of the eyes, affec- 
tions of the nervous system, defects of development, 
excessive paleness or thinness, and mental dulness ^■ 
("Juvenile Offenders," p. 95). 

Certainly no teacher should be allowed without 
a physician's permission ever to flay the body of a 
child with the rod, nor should a physician ever per- 
[195J 



The Moral Agents. 



mit such infliction where better methods will prove 
more available in the child's development. I be- 
lieve, if teachers always assumed the right mental 
attitude toward youth, punishment of a physical 
character would prove wholly unnecessary. An 
experience of my own, years ago, while I was yet 
but a youth myself, led me to this conclusion. 

I was a young and quite inexperienced " deestrict 
skule'' teacher away out on the plains of Kansas. 
Among the pupils there was a big, strapping, raw- 
boned young man, somewhat older than myself, who 
had a " past " which was lurid with its record of 
^' scraps," bloody and otherwise, and which set him 
apart as a formidable bully among the younger gen- 
eration. No sooner had I become installed in my 
duties than I was forced to listen to the recital of 
some of his terrifying adventures with former teach- 
ers and fellow-pupils that made my blood creep and 
my heart begin to sink when I realized the possibility 
of an encounter with him. The affaire de force which 
he had had with my immediate predecessor was 
enough to give me pause, should I feel called upon at 
any time to inflict corporal punishment on him. 

The teacher referred to possessed a rather irascible 
nature, sensitive, petulant, domineering. It fell to 
my rawboned friend to be signalled out by my pug 
nacious predecessor as a shining mark among the' 
[196] 



The Teacher. 



embryonic criminals, of whom it would be well 
to make a brilliant example. He had not long to 
wait. The excuse for an encounter was speedily 
granted by the hypothetical offender. But the en- 
counter on, the unhappy teacher speedily learned 
that he was grappling with a juvenile pugilist who 
was rapidly getting the better of him. In self-de- 
fense he laid his hand on the butt-end of a herder's 
whip and brought it down unmercifully on the back 
of the quivering lad. The blood spurted from his 
face and neck, and his body relaxed as the teacher 
disengaged himself, sans coat, sans shirt, sans trou- 
sers. The disconsolate but undaunted lad slipped 
away and returned in a half-hour with a loaded shot- 
gun, which he recklessly exploded at the head of the 
pedagogue, but with inefficient aim, thus perhaps 
being saved from the gallows. 

During the lunch hour, one warm, spring noon, I 
was meditating on these Wild-west narratives, while 
the children were gently playing in the fields, when 
my ear was suddenly pained with a frightful shriek. 
In a moment the younger pupils rushed in and in- 
formed me with bated breath that my formidable 
friend was unmercifully pummelling a negro scholar. 
It was in the days when Missouri ruffianism was 
still rampant in Kansas, coupled with the intensest 
hatred of the degraded negroes. I had audaciously 
[197] 



The Moral Agents. 



defied the school supervisors of my district, and ad- 
mitted the negro into the school, a thing in that day 
unheard of in that region. Naturally, but little sym- 
pathy had been extended to me because of this rash 
performance. 

The offense smelt so rank to heaven, that my 
young, formidable friend, I learned afterwards, had 
sworn he would kill the negro should I admit him. 
Imagine, then, my consternation, when I learned 
that his sworn vengeance was even now being con- 
summated, while I was mildly enjoying my lunch! 
"What should I do?" flashed through my mind, 
which could apparently conjure no reply. 

However, I flew to the door, and indeed found the 
lad laying blow on blow on the head and face of the 
affrighted negro, assisted by a youngster who was 
employing his foot as a catapult against the posterior 
fortifications of the beleaguered African. When I 
saw the blood flowing freely from his victim's face I 
called out fearlessly to the ringleader, commanding 
him to restrain himself immediately, or I would ex- 
pel him from the school and make it impossible for 
him to return. Something in my voice seemed to 
master him, and he withdrew in a dogged and sullen 
fashion, permitting me to call the school to order. 

When we were all seated, the pupils looked at me 
with dilated eyes and breathlessly began to wonder 

[198] 



The Teacher. 



what I would do. And I wondered too. Doubtless 
it was my good fortune to be acquainted with the 
lad's career, which naturally put a rational damper 
on my heated temper. Finally, I mustered sufficient 
courage to call the young man to the desk where I 
was seated. But he refused to come. I then walked 
quietly over to him, sat for a moment or two calmly 
at his side, and then merely reminded him how 
utterly impossible it would be to conduct the school 
successfully if such offenses as his were not re- 
strained or properly punished. 

I descanted timidly on the necessity of an edu- 
cation to every young man, and therefore how indis- 
pensable the school was to the State. I expected 
every moment to see him leap upon and damn me 
for having allowed a " nigger " in the school. But 
instead he slowly dropped his head and heard me 
attentively. Gradually, I got hold of his heart- 
strings and touched his better nature. He answered 
never a word, to my complete amazement, even 
though I reminded him of his unenviable record, 
and that if he were again expelled from school it 
would bring his education to a permanent close. I 
told him, however, that it was necessary for the dis- 
cipline of the school that I suspend him for a week, 
after which he might, if he chose, return. 

I anticipated a genuine struggle when I reached 
[199] 



The Mokal Agents. 



that climax of my authority, but he seemed utterly 
subdued, and, for some reason, became wholly sub- 
missive to my will. He did return and became, in 
point of deportment, one of my model pupils, and 
my stoutest friend and defender in all Eastern 
Kansas. Here was indeed a case in which corporal 
punishment, rather than moral persuasion, would 
have been detrimental to both pupil and teacher. 
And this interesting experience convinced me that 
always, if the teacher could assume the proper state 
of mind and heart toward a pupil, however appar- 
ently incorrigible, he could be mastered without the 
intercession of physical punishment. 



[200] 




CHAPTER X. 

oBnbiircinment. 

S man the creature or creator of circum- 
stances? Is he cast within an invisible 
mould of influences which shape and fash- 
ion his character, or does he consciously 
himself mould the forces that play upon his life^ 
These are the problems that have ever confronted 
man. But perhaps in no age of the world has man 
been better and more intelligently enabled to solve 
them than to-day. In the processes of modern edu- 
cation we are rapidly passing from the conjectural 
methods to the scientific and demonstrable. We 
are no longer satisfied with suppositions and guesses. 
Tradition we cast easily aside and ask for impartial 
truth. 

That man is really the product of his environment 
seems to-day, in the light of evolution and sociology, 
an indisputable law of life. Indeed, until we right- 
fully understand and appreciate this law of environ- 

[201] 



The Moeal Agents. 



ment, our lives must needs be but fragmentary and 
illogical. If we permit influences to play upon and 
mould our beings, thoughtless of their nature or 
effects, which are at least somewhat modifiable by 
application, we are suicidally reckless, unless fortu- 
nately endowed by heredity. 

But what is environment? Is it merely the ma- 
terial and visible world with which we constantly 
commune, consciously or unconsciously, or is it also 
a vast invisible plane of forces with which we are 
in constant contact yet of whose presence we are 
mostly unaware? Both descriptions of environment 
are true. But it is the former, or more distinctly the 
visible or material environment, which we more com- 
monly regard in our studies. 

" To understand the sustaining influence of en- 
vironment in the animal world, one has only to recall 
what the bilogists term the extrinsic or subsidiary 
conditions of vitality," observes Prof. Drummond. 
" Every living thing normally requires for its de- 
velopment an environment containing air, light, heat, 
and water. . . . When w^e simply remember how in- 
dispensable food is to growth and work, and when we 
further bear in mind that the food-supply is solely 
contributed by the environment, we realize at once 
the meaning and the truth of the proposition that 
without environment there can be no life. Seventy 

[202] 



Environment. 



per cent, at least of the human body is made of 
water, the remaining thirty per cent, is of gases and 
earths. These have all come from environment. 
Through the secret pores of the skin two pounds of 
water are exhaled daily from every healthy adult. 
The supply is kept up by environment. Definite por- 
tions are continuously abstracted from and added 
to the organism." 

This, however, refers to the purely material phase 
of environmental influences. We find on analysis 
that there are several other phases, such as racial, 
climatic, social, sensational, mental, and spiritual. 
Not until we thoroughly appreciate the force of each 
will we be able to guide our lives sanely or develop 
health and character along rational lines. 

WHAT CAUSES SO MANY DIFFEKENT KINDS 
OF PEOPLE. 

We ask ourselves why are there so many different 
kinds of human beings in the world? Why are there 
so many different races; why so many different 
nationalities and individual idiosyncrasies? There 
must be some law underlying all these variations, 
for in Nature there are no uncaused accidents. Es- 
pecially do we feel the force of this statement when 
we realize that according to the conclusions of eth- 

[203] 



The Moral Agents. 



nologists, or the scientific students of the human 
races, that there was once a period in the evolution 
of humankind when there was but one homogeneous 
race in all the world. 

We find that this result is directly attributable to 
climatic and geographical environment. People who 
dwell in hot climates have wholly different tempera- 
ments and dispositions from people who dwell in 
cold or temperate climates. In addition to this, we 
find that pathological conditions are also varied with 
climatic and geographical environment. Diseases 
that are common in one portion of the world are 
utterly unknown in other portions. More than that, 
some diseases, such as the measles for instance, which 
in our climate we regard very indifferently and not 
at all dangerous, among the Patagonians we are told 
will rage like a plague carrying off thousands in a 
season. 

We have observed how persons who have become 
acclimated to one section of a country, if they 
migrate to another section will immediately be- 
come subject to some disease which does not at 
all affect the natives. Thus people who have been 
born and reared in the northern portions of 
America, if they migrate to the south, are usually 
overtaken with malarial fevers, whereas the natives 
are little affected by it. While, on the contrary, 
[204] 



Environment. 



if Southerners remove northward, they are usually 
carried off with pulmonary or phthisic troubles. 

Here, however, it is very evident another environ- 
mental element enters into the problem. For, the 
fact that not all persons who migrate to other zones 
are pathologically affected, but only the minority, 
and the accompanying fact that the pathological in- 
disposition to which they yield is almost invariably 
the one that is believed to be prevalent, if not indi- 
genous, within the new geographical area, indicate 
that the invisible environment now at play is largely 
of a mental or psychical nature. 

Undoubtedly sanitation, rigidly conducted, plays 
a most noble part in the eradication of zymotic 
diseases. But while this must be allowed, if not 
earnestly emphasized on the physical side, we must 
not wholly neglect the mental and spiritual side of 
the problem. For it is now indisputable that the 
mere actual existence of disease germs, if indeed 
such germs do actually exist, does not of itself 
constitute an efficient cause for the generation and 
spread of zymotic diseases. It is also just as well 
demonstrated that the human mind is so curiously 
constituted that if the conception of a disease germ 
be vividly portrayed to the consciousness, it will on 
some personalities produce the same pathological 

[205] 



The Moral Agents. 



condition as if their bodies were attacked by the 
material germs. 

There are some bodies which are wholly iminune to 
zymotic germs, but there are also some minds which 
are immune to the reception of a disease thought, 
and in some such minds there resides the force that 
may nullify the power of the disease germs in the 
body. The '^ British Medical Journal " (Autumn, 
1897) said : " Disease of the body is so much in- 
fluenced by the mind that in each case we have to 
understand the patient quite as much as the malady. 
This is not learnt at the hospitals." Van Norden, 
in his ^^ Twentieth Century Practice of Medicine," 
remarks : ^' There are many carefully observed cases 
of diabetes on record, in which the disease followed 
a sudden fright, or joy, or some other disturbance 
of mental equilibrium." 

One of the most baneful and secret diseases of the 
human system is cancer. It is always fatal, and is 
to a very large degree beyond the control of the 
physician's skill. We need not therefore be surprised 
to learn that cancer is chiefly induced by mental 
conditions. " I have been surprised," says Dr. Mur- 
chison, " how often patients with primary cancer of 
the liver have traced the cause of their ill-health to 
protracted grief or anxiety. The cases have been far 

[206] 



Environment. 



too numerous to be accounted for as mere coinci- 
dences." 

Here we see how the entire body is eaten away, 
beginning its deadly emasculation usually in the 
most vital centres, as the direct result not of a 
bacillus-invasion, but of the projection of a mental 
germ into the blood. Dr. Snow (London " Lancet," 
1880) asserts his conviction that " the vast majority 
of the cases of cancer, especially of breast and uter- 
ine cancer, are due to mental anxiety." 

We learn that even where the tubercle bacillus has 
been introduced into the system no medication is 
effective unless it is assisted by an associated mental 
presence. If the mind or will of the patient is ab- 
normal, it is very apt to nullify the effect of the 
drugs and thus make the patient incurable. " The 
evidence that the brain cortex regulates absorption, 
secretion, vascular tension and anabolic and kata- 
bolic process in the cells of tissues may now be re- 
garded as complete," says Prof. Clouston in the 
" British Medical Journal " for the 18th of January, 
1896. Sores in many melancholies will not heal. 
Gland and lung tissues in idiots and dements are 
unable to resist the attacks of the tubercle bacillus, 
so that two-thirds of our idiots and one-third of our 
dements die of tubercular disease." * 

* For the authorities here cited see " Force of Mind" by Dr. 
Scho^eld— passim, 

[207] 



The Moral Agents. 



Fear or fright has been known to induce cholera 
and other infectious diseases. Of course, this fact 
must not be misconstrued, as it often is by teachers 
of so-called mental science. Observing that zymotic 
diseases are induced by mental conditions they are 
inclined to go the extreme length of the imagination 
and assert that not the germ is the physical source 
of all zymotic disease but merely the mental germ 
of fear-thought. Naturally, this is absurd. The 
mind cannot create a physical germ, whatever mental 
germs it may be able to conjure. 

What is meant by the association of the mind with 
the induction of an infectious disease into the sys- 
tem is merely that the germ, being present in the in- 
visible atmosphere, everybody is subject to its attack, 
and perhaps everybody within the infected zone is 
attacked. But the individuals who have strong wills, 
who are mentally positive, are the more apt to be im- 
mune to the attack. Whereas those who weaken 
their wills by fear and by false imaginings loosen the 
hold of the resistful mind upon the tissues of the 
organism. Hence, when the germ attempts to rush 
in, the mind, instead of locking the door, is seized 
with panic and tries to run away, but leaves the door 
ajar. 

A rational understanding of this law will enable 
those who attempt to practise mental therapeutics, 

[208] 



Environment. 



and yet who are not schooled in psychology or the 
biological sciences, to protect themselves against 
many dangerous, if not criminal, errors. It is 
because the Christian Scientist feels he is divinely 
called upon to disbelieve in every physical law of 
Nature, and to attempt to counteract all the dis- 
covered laws of materia medica that he unfor- 
tunately falls into such serious and often criminal 
mistakes when he attempts the cure of organic or 
infectious troubles. Undoubtedly, even though the 
bacillus or contagious germ be lodged in the system, 
and has begun its vitiating and destructive labors, 
its progress may be materially checked, if not indeed 
neutralized, by the active resistance of the mind. 
And it is the realization of this law that effectively 
permits of the introduction of psychic methods in 
modern practice. 

The well-known fact that healthy bodies easily 
resist the attack of disease germs, and indeed do 
not even allow the individual to know that the 
body is thus attacked, is clear proof that the mere 
existence of the infectious germ within any area 
does not necessarily condemn all the inhabitants 
therein to the deadly disease. Normal health alone 
is sufficient to succor one from infectious invasion. 
But it is now an indisputable fact that no agency 
enters so effectively into the maintenance of health, 
N [209] 



The Moral Agents. 



or of its restoration when impaired, as the intel- 
ligent employment of the mind.* 

The mind that yields to fear sharpens the weapon 
that slays the body. Thought shapes the mould in 
which the frame is cast. The nerves are the whips 
that lash the blood to action, and these whips are 
swayed by the mental overseer. With a sluggish 
or indifferent mind, the nerves become flaccid and 
of slow action. The blood then moves slowly and 
grows, as it were, stagnant, in whose bosom all 
toxic substances find free and fertile soil. 

But when the nerves are roused by intelligent 
mental action and intense will-energy, the white 
scavengers (the phagocytes) cleanse the body of 
its impurities, while the blood rushes keenly through 
the system, performing its magical labors.f 

Hence a good, honest conscience, plenty of work 
and rest and sleep, properly proportioned, with a 

* Dr. Maudsley (" 3End and Body," 1. 38) says "Perhaps we 
do not as Physicians consider sufficiently the influence of mental 
states in the production of diseases, their importance as symp- 
toms; or take all the advantages which we might get from them 
in our efforts to cure disease. Quackery seems to have got hold 
of a truth which legitimate medicine fails to appreciate or use 
adequately." 

f It is impossible for us to deal knowingly and wisely with 
various disorders of the body without directly recognizing the 
agency of states and conditions of mind, often in producing and 
always in modifying them " (Sir A. Clark,. Lancet, ii. 315). 

[210] 



Environment. 



good degree of exercise out-of-doors, accompanied 
with deep breathing of fresh air and a sufficient sup- 
ply of pure water, are all the requisites of normal 
health. If one utilizes these with regularity and 
keeps his thoughts on things noble, lofty, and unself- 
ish, in all probability he will never need the doctor 
or be taxed by the druggist. 

ENVIRONMENT AND TEMPERAMENTS. 

But while with conscious adaptation to our 
environment, and its appropriation to our own 
needs and development, we may preserve ourselves 
against vicious invasion and disaster, we must not 
forget that in our contact with human beings we 
must take them as they are and recognize their 
limitations and demands. If we set out in our 
earthly pilgrimage wholly ignorant of the fact that 
organisms are distinguishable by certain fixed and 
characteristic differences, we shall often meet confu- 
sion, and perhaps not infrequent failure. 

There is a marked and absolute difference between 
individuals, in point of mental and physical charac- 
teristics, so marked, indeed, that every person may 
be distinguished from another by his carriage, his 
features, his voice, and his general outline. If you 
know a person you are quite as apt to recognize 
[211] 



The Moral Agents. 



him in a crowd if you see the back of his head as 
his face. Even, indeed, if you can see the lower 
portion of the head, should you be well acquainted, 
you would not probably fail of recognition. Among 
a crowd of people where various voices mingle, how 
easily we may distinguish one particular voice with 
which we are familiar! Certain persons are so dis- 
tinguished from others that they may be easily dis- 
cerned by the shape of their feet, the formation of 
their hands, and even the colorings of their finger- 
nails. Some law is at work throughout the entire 
domain of living beings that sets off each individual 
apart from all others and designates him by specific 
temperaments or idiosyncrasies. What is it? 

We learned when we were studying heredity that 
in each cell of the blood there existed a certain 
determining factor which oriented the course of the 
completed organism that evolved from it. We 
learned that that determining factor was chiefly 
psychic. That is, the remains or residua of past ex- 
periences and associations which finally aggregated 
in the microscopical bit of protoplasm called a cell, 
are the invisible agents that determine the kind of 
organic being into which the cell will ultimately 
evolve. Thus every cell is distinguished from every 
other. Thus each cell or group of cells is specialized 
and utilized in some specific work. 
[212] 



Envieonment. 



Therefore, as each cell is genetically distinguish- 
able from every other, it must follow that entire 
bodies, which are built up by the association of mil- 
lions of these little cells, will vary according to the 
predominating characteristics of the cells that com- 
pose them. Hence the predominating characteristics 
of the combined cells will constitute the peculiar 
temperament or idiosyncrasy of the organ which they 
compose, and the various organs that combine to 
make up a complete organism or living body will be 
mutually distinguished by the characteristics im- 
planted in them by the germinal cells. 

Thus we see that all temperaments are primarily 
the outgrowth of psychic or mental states, for the 
cell nature is determined by the mysterious guiding 
power within, or the psychic mould in which it is 
cast. Therefore, if each cell is so determined, of 
course the same law determines the entire structure. 
Hence it follows that there are so many individual 
idiosyncrasies and so many generic temperaments. 

But notwithstanding the infinite variety of in- 
dividual characteristics they are easily classified, 
and limited to a few distinguishing groups. In all, 
there are but four chief classes into which the entire 
human race may be cast with reference to their 
mental, moral, and physical peculiarities. They 
have been well named after some especial physical 

[213] 



The Moral Agents. 



feature which seems to characterize the qualities 
that differentiate them. 

We might first speak of the sanguine temperament. 
This is named from the Latin word for blood, and 
hence indicates that an individual is full-blooded. 
In such an one we would expect to find big veins, 
well filled with the fluid of life, a complexion ruddy 
if not of brilliant hue, of the type of the blonde, with 
an eye of greyish or blue tint. His frame would be 
inclined to fullness, but with big lungs his respira- 
tion would be free, deep, and full, while in his 
normal state the circulation of the blood and humors 
would be keenly active. In such an one, so a-thrill 
with fiery blood, strong and magnetic because of 
the large quantity of iron it contains, and with 
such deep-breathing apparatus, we would expect 
to find the emotions intense, at times overpowering, 
full-sexualized and amative, but not generally con- 
stant or reliable. 

Such temperaments carry at times great personal 
force, and not seldom they are able to sweep aside 
obstacles that to others would be insurmountable. 
Men possessing this temperament are often instinc- 
tive leaders, commanding rather by their emotive 
than by their will-power, swaying not by reason but 
by passion. In typical representatives of this tem- 
perament there is usually a soft, deep, melodious, 
[214] 



Environment. 



resonant voice. This type generally succeeds best 
where great ventures are triumphant, without de- 
manding too great a strain on the patience or en- 
durance of the promoter. For because of the inten- 
sity of the emotion it soon exhausts itself, and being 
instinctively optimistic, if the victory is too long 
postponed, the tenacity of the purpose is snapped 
and the venture fails. 

Their weakness lies in their want of endurance; 
but their strength lies in their innate optimism, 
which speedily returns after the disappointment of 
defeat. Such people are either high in the air or 
debased in low despondency. But they do not re- 
main long despondent. They soon revive and begin 
again with renewed hope and sanguine anticipations. 

Another type, and one in complete contrast with 
that just described, is the choleric or bilious tem- 
perament. This type is very common, and one which 
often leads to misinterpretation, because it is fre- 
quently misunderstood. It consists of a seething 
fountain of the passions which with easy provocation 
sputter forth and burst into a frenzy. The distin- 
guishing characteristic of this temperament is its 
vital strength, its capacity of endurance, its tenacity 
of purpose, and unquenchable pugnacity. In such 
temperament there sits in power the royal right of 
revenge, and woe to him who falls beneath its bane. 
[215] 



The Moral Agents. 



Anger, hate, envy, jealousy, are here all-controlling 
forces. But, when these are in abeyance, then are 
their opposites, love, composure, admiration, and 
confidence, lifted into supreme authority. 

Because of the abundance of bile in the system, and 
the consequent swarthy complexion, this tempera- 
ment has been denominated the bilious temperament. 
In its typical phase, it is the distinctive and perfect 
brunette. The complexion is not only dark, but dark 
also are the hair and the eyes ; the latter are not in- 
frequently like black diamonds, shining with pene- 
trating brilliance, while the former is glossy, straight 
or curly, according to modifications of the tempera- 
ment, and usually thick and heavy grown. 

In this type the sexual passions and the amative 
disposition are also highly developed, as in the 
sanguine temperament, with this difference, that 
while in the latter the passion is flitting and un- 
stable, in the former it is persistent and tenacious. 
Therefore, when love is thwarted, it meets in the 
heart of the swarthy temperament with the desire 
and passion for revenge, while in the sanguine or 
blonde temperament it is passed by as an idle thing, 
and calmly awaits another breeze to fan its passion 
into a flame. 

The choleric temperament is fitful, irascible, 
tempestuous, when finally aroused, though not 
[216] 



Environment. 



easily excited. It will long endure oppression and 
injustice, but, when it finds itself foiled, all the 
dark depths of its nature are aroused and burst into 
seething and confusing passion. 

" To be once in doubt. 
Is once to be resolved. " 

They are slow to anger, but long in recovering from 
it. They will listen for awhile to jealousy, but will 
not long pursue it ere they slay it with the love 
whose disappointment caused it. 

" TMnk'st thou I'd make a life of jealousy, 
To follow still tlie changes of the moon, 
With fresh suspicions ? " 

cries Othello in his agony. 

His was the choleric or bilious temperament par 
excellence. And in that character Shakespeare re- 
veals all its noble and base characteristics. He could 
love, and his love was deep as the ocean, but when 
that love was turned if not into hate, at least into 
despair and revenge, it could " exchange him for a 
goat and turn all the business of his soul " into base 
purposes. In dealings with such temperaments ex- 
treme caution and deference are necessary ; for once 
they fall out with those who were their friends the 
restitution of the former feeling is difficult and long 
postponed. They make the best, the truest, of 
[217] 



The Moral Agents. 



friends, and the worst, the most irrepressible, of 
foes. They are lofty lovers, and profound haters. 

In the nervous temperament we find features quite 
distinguished from those we have thus far been 
studying. Here, instead of the strong and vigorous 
facial expressions we discover in the temperaments 
just reviewed, we meet with sharply carved linea 
ments, of delicate structure, a frame of wiry con- 
struction and inclined to slightness, stirred with 
quick impulses and flitting passions. Here the ama- 
tive or sexual appetencies are not as permanently 
developed nor so often do they sway the system, 
though they are susceptible of large development and 
usually enter deeply into the history and vicissitudes 
of the individual. 

This temperament is distinctively the artistic, 
and is therefore less sensible of conscious person- 
ality, but easily loses itself in environment and 
abstract ideals. It is the temperament of the poet, 
the romantic lover, the playwright and the actor, of 
the sculptor, the painter, the social dreamer, and the 
impulsive agitator. 

It is introspective and lives more in its own feel- 
ings than in external conditions. To it the world is 
inverted, being more sensibly a part of the inward 
consciousness than of external fact. It is plastic, 
almost protoplastic, easily moulded, and preemi- 

[218] 



Environment. 



nently suggestible. It is innocuous, easily imposed 
on, given to credulity, trustful and ingenuous. It 
prefers to think the world good and beautiful, as 
reflected in its own sentiments, and despairs when it 
finds the world full of gall and guile. 

On its moral side, this temperament has given to 
history many of its greatest, noblest, and most benfi- 
cial characters. On its debased side, it has pro- 
duced many of the most atrocious villains, thieves, 
marauders, despots, and degenerates, the world has 
known. From this type when demoralized come 
chiefly the derelicts, the hysterics, the demoniacs, 
the hypochondriacs, the neuropaths. Describing ex- 
aggerated and debased types of this temperament, 
Lombroso says : " A salient characteristic of hyster- 
ics is their mobility of moods. The subject passes 
with extraordinary rapidity from laughter to tears, 
like children." 

" One hour," writes Sydenham, " they are irasci- 
ble and discontented with everything; the next day 
they are cheerful, and follow about their acquaint- 
ances with a tenacity equal to the affection which 
they first had for them. Their sensibility is exalted 
by the most futile causes. A word will grieve them 
like some real misfortune, such as an unkindness 
from their husband, the death of their children, and 
so on. Their impulses are not wanting in intellec- 

[219] 



The Moral Agents. 



tual control, but are followed with excessive rapidity 
by action.'' 

" Moral impressions dominate them/' writes 
Schulle, "because they become organic. An idea 
w^ill bring about a convulsion, and often one notices 
in them a sudden incoherence, a sudden confusion of 
mind, which passes after a long sleep." (See "The 
Female Offender," Lombroso.) 

Women are so commonly possessed of this tem- 
perament, which has to a certain extent become de- 
generate because of heredity and social influences, 
that it behooves men thoroughly to understand it, if 
they expect to live happily with them. Unfortunate 
indeed is that woman, who, endowed with this tem- 
perament, has married a stolid and unsympathetic 
husband. He will never be able to understand her, 
and will constantly misconstrue her actions and 
motives. Often friendships have been shattered be- 
tween men for this same reason. Perhaps there is 
no temperament which is more susceptible to misin- 
terpretation than the nervous temperament, nor one 
concerning which we should be more thoroughly in- 
formed. 

It is beyond dispute that the results of modern 
civilization are tending toward the development 
of far finer nervous organisms, which keyed to a 
high intellectuality are also subject to deep de- 

[220] 



Envikonment. 



pression and resulting dullnes of the moral sensi- 
bilities. We meet with more of this type to-day, per- 
haps, than in any former age of civilization. It be- 
hooves us to study and gauge it, and learn both how 
to control it and how to be wisely controlled by it. 
It is this type that gives the world its intellectual 
geniuses, who, some tell us, border at times closely 
on insanity. Where such types are but moderately 
developed, they form the nobler part of the race and 
their lives redound only to the happiness of others. 
They are the philanthropists and benefactors of 
society. Not that such are confined to this type, 
but that where this type is normally developed its 
possessors incline to goodly and philanthropic deeds. 
If one finds that there is a tendency to dangerous 
exaggeration of the features of this temperament, 
then it would be wise to associate freely and inti- 
mately with the opposite types of the lymphatic or 
the sanguine temperaments. Especially is associ- 
ation with the lymphatic temperament, to which we 
shall shortly refer, of supreme advantage. The rea- 
son is, that the nervous types are most sensitively 
suggestible; therefore, their very intimacy with the 
lymphatics will by the reflex effect of the mental 
environment of such association cause a relaxation 
in the nervous centres of the over-sensitive, and 
awaken a sense of calmness and repose. 
[221] 



The Moral Agents. 



In business no less than in marriage, other things 
being as nearly equal as may be possible, it is well 
for opposite types of temperament to associate. 
Given a man with keen intellect and excitable nerv- 
ousness, sensitive, sympathetic, penetrating, and an- 
other of average intellect, but inexcitable, calm, 
poised, balanced, slow to think and slow to act, 
and the two will constitute an almost ideal partner- 
ship. One could with safety prophesy success for 
such a venture. 

For, the man of lymphatic temperament presents 
first a rather pallid complexion, revealing an un- 
certain flow of the blood, sometimes resulting in 
congestion in unexpected centres. Therefore his na- 
ture is not heated, the humors of his system are not 
fiery and seething, as in the choleric temperament, 
nor are his sexual qualities so vigorously developed. 
His muscles are flabby, indicating that the nerves 
that order and control them are not rigid, instantly 
responsive to stimulation, or sensitively expectant 
of agitation. The nerve substance is, so to speak, in 
a greater state of solution, than in the other tempera- 
ments. The phosphorus and fat are melted, accord- 
ing to the description given in a previous chapter; 
therefore less electrical energy plays through the 
nerves and they are in a state of comparative stag- 
nancy. 

[222] 



Environment. 



This t^^pe are mentally inclined to sluggishness 
and stolidity. They cannot be whipped into action ; 
they must be coaxed. They will yield to authority 
because of their indisposition to resist. They 
endure the galling chains of oppression because 
they cannot rouse their bile to action. They often 
succeed, because like heavy bodies their momen- 
tum is large in spite of the slowness of their move- 
ments. They constitute an excellent buffer to the 
nervous excitability of people with nervous tem- 
peraments. They will stop a quarrel, merely be- 
cause of their indolence. They will frequently be 
deferred and submitted to, not because of their per- 
sistence, but merely because their long delays and 
indecision wear out their opponents. 

It is manifest that these four temperamental types 
are not ideally present in any representative of them. 
They usually commingle in more or less even division 
among individuals of the race. We discern them 
only where their features are distinctly marked in 
certain persons. We catch glimpses of all of them in 
almost every individual. In some, one or more of 
the characteristics of certain types predominate, 
and then we classify such persons as belonging to 
such and such temperament, merely because of the 
predominating features. It is well that it is so, for 
in its extreme type any one of the temperaments is 
[223] 



The Moral Agents. 



almost equally undesirable. But as the result of 
physical and mental environment, these tempera- 
ments have mutually qualified each other, so that we 
find parts of each of them in almost all human 
beings. 

But by studying the types carefully, and learning 
to distinguish the predominant temperamental fea- 
ture, we shall learn how to get on with men and 
women far more successfully, than those who are 
careless of such investigations. The study of human 
nature is the supreme study of the race. There are 
indeed only two forms of knowledge necessary, if 
not the only two possible. These are the knowledge 
of personal self, and the knowledge of race- 
self. Equipped with a scientific information on 
these two planes of study, which are so far-reach- 
ing and all-inclusive, a man might be said to be 
truly educated even though he were quite ignorant 
of what is known as literature and a liberal educa- 
tion. 

THE CONTKOLLING FORCE IN MENTAL 
MASTERY. 

We have thus observed in our studies that the Man 
is built by distinctive forces which operate in the 
development of each individual. By an analysis of 
[224] 



Environment. 



these forces we learn at last that they merge chiefly 
in one; namely, in that force which wells within the 
breast of the individual and constitutes the especial 
energy and prowess of his being. The world without 
affects us only indirectly, the world within, directly. 
None of the forces that mingle in the material en- 
vironment of a human life does in aught affect it 
until they have become inwoven in its nature and 
comprise the powers that move and compel it to 
action. 

Neither climate, nor geographical situation, nor 
heredity, nor parentage, nor education, nor temper- 
amental surroundings, nor aught, indeed, in heaven 
and earth or the things beneath the earth, does in 
any way effectuate the character or the quality of a 
human being until it becomes a conscious or uncon- 
scious force within him, that makes for his good or 
evil, his evolution or devolution. 

In modern psychology this distinctive force is 
denominated auto-suggestion. All the influences 
that play upon a human life are but as the pattering 
of the rain on the roof top, or the roar of thunder in 
distant mountains, until they penetrate the active 
inner centres of one's being and set the machinery of 
one's life in action. It is often supposed that the 
power of suggestion, that especially which is exer- 
cised by one who is alleged to be extraordinarily en- 
o [225] 



The Mokal Agents. 



dowed with this mysterious power, is of itself sufiQ- 
cientlj strong to effect its will on one's life, though 
the individual so affected may not be aware of the 
fact. There is a partial truth in this assertion ; but, 
like all half-truths, it is untruthfully exaggerated. 

As a matter of fact, one's life can, and often is, un- 
consciously affected by meretricious or beneficial in- 
fluences; as when one unconsciously absorbs the 
manners, habits, moral qualities, and mental dispo- 
sitions of those with whom one associates. So, too, 
one may be affected by a conscious effort on the part 
of another, who sends forth an inaudible and purely 
mental suggestion, that may prove beneficial or in- 
jurious to the individual towards whom it may be 
directed. 

Psychological experimentation has proven these 
laws, and it is only the uninformed who presume to 
question them. But because of this modern discovery 
a sense of fear has seized many, and they have per- 
haps unwittingly permitted a new superstition to 
seize their souls which often brings them misery. I 
have known some persons who have been so overcome 
with the notion that a certain person's mind has been 
set to work upon them, the effects of which they 
dread, that they have been driven into a frenzy of 
unhappy anticipations, and could secure no peace of 
mind. 

[226] 



EiS^VIKONMEisrT. 



The danger lies in perceiving only the half of the 
truth. While it is demonstrable that one's thoughts 
may penetrate another's mind to a certain extent, 
without the other's knowledge, and thus may affect 
his happiness, yet it is also true that such Intrusions 
into another mind can be effected only in such minds 
as permit themselves to become exposed to attack 
because of fear or negative passivity. 

The fear or distressful anticipation which one ex- 
periences on contemplating the possibility of the 
intrusion of another's mind is itself a species of 
auto-suggestion, and reveals the negative or passive 
state of such a mind. It has so permitted the sug- 
gestion to seize it that it is powerless in the presence 
of another mind. Therefore, whenever that other 
mind chooses to impose upon it, the weaker mind is 
incapacitated for resistance. Now in that very auto- 
suggestion lies the danger and in no other. 

The obnoxious mind of another might attempt a 
thousand times to obtrude itself upon a mind sup- 
posed to be susceptible ; but if such mind shall prove 
to be irresponsive to the demands of the undesired 
suggestion then it does not penetrate the being of 
the person attacked, and falls without. 

The discovery of this law teaches the highest indi- 
vidualism. It teaches that each individual consti- 
tutes his own fortress of defence, and will he but 
[227] 



The Moral Agents. 



exercise his powers his kingdom need never be in- 
vaded by a vicious or deteriorating force. 

It is the unconscious exercise of this force that has 
so often created the heroes of history. All the 
world's great reformers have been endued with this 
instinctive disposition toward self-defence by the re- 
quisite auto-suggestion in each approaching crisis. 
It was the unconscious obedience to this law that 
compelled Martin Luther to defy the authorities and 
the fear of his friends when he was called upon to 
face the Diet at Worms, and swore that he would 
enter the city though each tile upon the roof-tops 
was an incarnate devil. 

It was this deathless spirit in the breast of 
Napoleon that made him for awhile the uncon- 
querable hero of martial advantages; though seem- 
ingly oft-defeated his very determination not to 
see defeat braved him to dash on to victory. It 
was this auto-suggestion, the belief that nothing 
could daunt or down him, that called him again to 
the field of action from Elba, v/hen all the world 
thought him permanently defeated. It is this sus- 
taining suggestion of destiny that so often saves one 
from despair and brings a newer opportunity and a final 
triumph. The realization of this law, and the fact that 
its exercise lies within the power of each individual, 
belies that often quoted sonnet on "Opportunity at- 

[228] 



Environment. 



tributed to the late Senator Ingalls, which runs as 

follows: 

*' Master of human destinies am I! 
Fame, love and fortune on my footsteps wait. 
Cities and fields I walk ; I penetrate 
Deserts and seas remote, and passing by- 
Hovel and mart and palace — soon or late 
I knock unbidden once at every gate! 
If sleeping, wake — if feasting, rise before 
I turn away. It is the hour of fate. 
And they who follow me reach every state 
Mortals desire, and conquer every foe, 
Save death; but those who doubt or hesitate, 
Condemned to failure, penury, and woe, 
Seek me in vain and uselessly implore: 
I answer not and I return no more." 

Were this, indeed, the law of life, the entire race 
might well despair. For how many among earth's 
billions of inhabitants have really ever snatched 
time by the forelock and seized the one and only 
opportunity that presented itself! Were this the 
law of life, Nature were indeed a cruel Monster, on 
whose Medusa head all who gaze would swiftly turn 
to stone. How often have opportunities been lost 
only to teach the losers the lesson needful for the 
seizure of the next approaching invitation ! Indeed, 
by the unconscious rejection of opportunity are we 
taught by that best of all schoolmasters — Experi- 
ence — to grow in wisdom and appropriate the pow- 
ers that await us. 

[229] 



The Moral Agents. 



Most men who have succeeded well have often been 
the victims of defeat. First efforts are but meager 
prophecies of what may be achieved. There must be 
the frequent disappointment of defeat to harden the 
heart and make the energ}^ thus acquired the more 
aggressive and effective in life's battle. To teach the 
pessimism that inspired the sonnet quoted is to drive 
humankind to despair and increase the graves of 
suicides. 

It is this feeling of failure, failure because of lost 
opportunities, that multiplies the tribe of the grum- 
bler and increases the army of the ne'er-do-wells. 
They put on a grim and ugly visage, speaking despair 
in every feature. They cry " Now that the god of op- 
portunity has visited us once, when we were un- 
aware, and now that he will come no more, why try, 
why hope, why conjure courage for another effort ! " 
It is like the old doctrine of salvation we used to 
hear preached many decades ago. Our fathers 
thought that there was a time in each life when the 
Master knocked at the heart, and if the sinner re- 
sisted the voice of the Spirit, he would never come 
again, and the soul was forever lost. It was that 
deadly doctrine that so cursed the heart of John 
Bunyan for a long period of his life, and from which, 
indeed, he did not feel himself redeemed till he was 
imprisoned for his teachings. 

[230] 



Enviro:n^ment. 



Should this old theological doctrine be introduced 
into modern ethics it would create a vaster amount 
of mischief than ever it did among the ancient sin- 
ners. Once instruct one that never again will the 
overtures of opportunity be extended, then why 
should not such an one dig his own grave and 
speedily sink into it, and at once bury his misery 
with his life? Why is not one justified in blowing 
out one's brains, if, indeed, this world is so consti- 
tuted that only once in each life will the elusive 
god approach, and often in such disguise as to be but 
faintly recognized? 

No; no; if that were indeed the dismal law of life, 
this would not only be a hapless pilgrimage we are 
making, but a tragic irony, a monstrous mockery. 
It were better indeed not to have been born than to 
endure a fate that hangs on so slender a thread. 

This new age must teach a new philosophy. It is 
the philosophy of self-redemption, self-salvation. No 
soul is lost in this world or the next that determines 
not to be. The god of victory hides in the depths of 
every life; and he who wills may conjure him from 
his sleeping-cave. No one needs to despair, while 
there is life, while there is work. So long as men 
need, human opportunity shall appear. If the 
microbe of despair enters any heart, let it not be 
forgotten it may be destroyed by a " culture " pre- 
[231] 



The Mokal Agents. 



pared from the germs of hope that experience has 
generated. 

Some men have desired all their lives to achieve 
and have continually failed till grey hairs crown 
their brows and the grave seems to invite them. 
Then have they created an opportunity and begun to 
achieve. Some at forty, some at fifty, some even as 
late as sixty years of age, have made their first 
stroke tell and win out. 

No; let us rather believe that we cannot tell how 
often Opportunity will knock at our humble door, 
and ever keep our hearts expectant for his visitation. 
Let us rather accept Walter Malone's lines of hope- 
fulness and comfort : 

' ' They do me wrong who say I come no more, 
When once I knock and fail to find you in ; 
For emry day I stand outside your door, 
And bid you wake, and rise to fight and win." 

Yes; the very thought of such a possibility kindles 
in one's heart a sense of self-reliance and reassuring 
inspiration. The thought itself becomes a force to 
sustain and spur us on with new courage. For 
thought is an energy ; a force — a motor-power. If it 
turn us to action and pursuit of some goal, however 
often we may stumble and fall, if the thought perish 
not but still spurs us to action, in time the good will 
be attained. 

[232] 



Environment. 



" Wail not for precious chances passed away; 
Weep not for golden ages on tlie wane ; 
Each night I burn the records of the day ; 
At sunrise every soul is born again. 

This is the song that leads to hope, courage, action, 
achievement. Heed, repeat, and often sing it ; for it 
thrills with a suggestion that calls to the deeps of 
one's being and rouses to hope renewed. " Never 
say die; while there's a shot in the locker." The old 
saw is a good one and in thorough accord with the 
modern discoveries in psychology. The thought that 
we encourage is the power that kills and makes 
alive. To fear is to fail; to dread is to despair. 
The action fits the word, and the word fits the 
thought. As we think, indeed, we are. Why not 
then entertain thoughts of happiness and hope, for 
we can conjure them if we wish, even when clouds 
hang low and life seems uninviting. 

** Laugh like a boy at splendors that have sped; 
To vanished joys be blind and deaf and dumb; 
My judgments seal the dead past with its dead; 
But never bind a moment yet to come." 

This is the voice of Opportunity that reason and 
commonsense conjure from the universal experience 
of humankind. 

Man is made by circumstances. True. But it is 
[233] 



The Mokal Agents. 



also true that Man makes circumstances. We are 
not mere machines and automata. We are rational, 
self-consciouSj free, and self-determining beings. We 
can make of ourselves what we choose. We may 
shape our destiny as we will. ^' It is not in our 
stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings." 

So shape your thoughts, your resolves, your per- 
sistence, that your life shall re-echo the cry of the 
poet : 

" In the fell clutch of circumstance, 
I have not winced nor cried aloud. 
Under the bludgeonings of chance, 
My head is bloody, but unbowed. 

It matters not how straight the gate, 

How charged with punishments the scroll ; 

I am the master of my fate : 
I am the captain of my soul! " 



[234] 



AUg 3S li08 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Oct. 2004 

PreservationTechnoIogies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




013 310 660 1 



